The Agora Volume 3, 2013

Participatory Learning and Teaching Organization

The Agora Volume 3, 2013

Participatory Learning and Teaching Organization 1 PLATO Mission PLATO is a member-directed and participatory learning-in-retirement organization committed to developing, offering and promoting opportunities for intellectual and cultural enrichment for its members, and to providing scholarship support for adult students with significant financial needs enrolled in post-secondary education courses, or such other charitable purposes as the Board of Directors may determine.

The Agora Mission The Agora is a juried publication of PLATO, the Participatory Learning and Teaching Organization associated with the University of Wisconsin– Madison’s Division of Continuing Studies. The journal seeks to share the creative talents of its members by publishing their literary and artistic contributions in a periodic volume of original works, including poetry, short fiction, nonfiction and pictorial and photographic art. Of particular interest is material that has a distinct point of view and is inspired by broadly humanistic values and the liberal arts tradition.

Acknowledgements The Editorial Board of The Agora wishes to acknowledge the invaluable contribution of UW-Madison Continuing Studies, specifically,Wendy Kerr, Merikay Payne, Christina Finet and Professor Barry Orton. We wish also to acknowledge the support and cooperation of the PLATO Board of Directors. The Editorial Board also thanks the reviewers who assisted in the selection of the material for Volume 3.

2 The Agora

Volume 3, 2013

Editor-in-Chief Edna Canfield Editorial Board Lauren Blough Robert Fessenden Susan Hoffman Ellen Last Joan McCarthy Phil Paulson Enid Simon Irv Klibaner, Nonfiction Peter Finch, Poetry Fred Ross, Poetry Design Merikay Payne Cont. Studies Liaison Wendy Kerr

The Agora is a juried literary magazine published annually by PLATO, Participatory Learning and Teaching Organization, with funding and staff support from the University of Wisconsin–Madison Continuing Studies.

© 2013 PLATO, Participatory Learning and Teaching Organization

3 Dedication

The Agora Volume 3 is dedicated to Fred Ross whose inspiration motivated Vaunceil Kruse to assume the challenging role of first editor and the shaper of his vision. Also dedicated to all members of PLATO, who enrich and enhance the lives of their fellow members and whose support made this literary magazine possible.

4 Contents

artwork Susan Hoffman Four 8

nonfiction Kenneth Richardson My Big Brother’s Bedroom 9

poem David Berger When 11

artwork Mary Morgan Portrait Head 12

fiction Joanne Lee Storlie The Woman in the Chair 13

nonfiction Evelyn Rueckert The Adventures of Fredrich Barbarosa 18

nonfiction George Faunce The Ninth Street Bridge 20

poem George Faunce Men on Scaffolding 25

artwork Kenneth Richardson Rose 26

nonfiction Richard Radtke Social Graces 27

fiction William G. Ladewig Mother’s Day 29

artwork John Hoffman Reverie 32

5 poem Norman Leer Incarnations 33

nonfiction Ellen Maurer The Goat That Got Their Goat! 38

poem Paula Novotnak Broom 40

nonfiction Marnie Schulenburg O Give Me a Word: The Disciplined Life 41

artwork Julie Richardson Swimming with Stingrays 44

fiction Wil Selbrede Twisting in the Wind 45

fiction Enid Simon Saint Pete-R 49

artwork Gail McCoy Prelude to Daybreak 51

poem Paula Novotnak 42° North 52

fiction Richard Radtke Mrs. Switalski’s Fat Tuesday Prune Paczki Crisis 53

artwork Mary Morgan Imaginary Landscape 58

nonfiction Norman Leer Serious Fun: Some Danish Jazz Impressions 59

poem Judith Zukerman Sundays in Garfield Park 63

6 fiction William G. Ladewig Sunset Sunrise 64

artwork Gail McCoy Deeply Rooted Visions 66

poem Lorna Kniaz Stone Talk 67

poem George Faunce Monsters by the Bed 68

fiction Wil Selbrede Saying Goodbye 69

nonfiction 72 Rita Hack Rausch John

artwork Susan Hoffman Black Swallowtail 74

nonfiction April Hoffman Collecting Trips 75

poem Kenneth Richardson Goodnight, Irene 77

Contributors 78

Ordering Information inside back cover

artwork John Hoffman Nude on Stone Wall cover art

artwork Ellen Maurer Rocky Mountain High back cover art

7 Four, by Susan Hoffman

8 My Big Brother’s Bedroom by Kenneth Richardson

hat do you do when an older brother tells you his bedroom is “off Wlimits”? Easy. When he’s not there, you sneak in. And what a room it is, showing the personality of a high-testosterone, hard-charging high school senior who is interested in baseball, cars, airplanes and girls. But not neces- sarily in that order. At first you see a small bedroom with a mahogany twin bed (the other one is in my room), matching dresser and a medium-sized bookcase with vertical slats for the sides and back. A radio on the top shelf of the bookcase is within easy reach of the bed. Although we live in Hartsdale, New York, Don roots for the St. Louis Cardinals. Since New York City has three teams, why would he prefer one halfway across the country? I never asked. He would listen to night games when the Cardinals visited the Dodgers or New York Giants. On the second shelf a well-worn infielder’s glove, soft and pliable with neat’s-foot oil, holds a scuffed baseball. Next to it rests a bedraggled baseball cap. On the floor is a pair of baseball shoes with dirt-encrusted spikes and a sweaty uniform with lingering locker room fragrance. In the early evening on Saturdays, some auto mechanics clothes, stained with oil and smelling faintly of gasoline, might be dumped next to them. After his part-time job, my brother is in a hurry to shower and go out on a date. A chair and desk complete the furniture. The room may not seem that differ- ent from other bedrooms until you look up and see several airplanes, mostly World War II models, suspended from the ceiling with fishing line. I recall a B-17 Flying Fortress and a B-24 Liberator. Escorting these bombers might have been a few dependable fighters, such as a P-51 Mustang and a P-47 Thunderbolt.

9 Two other noteworthy aircraft seemingly flew in For weeks, maybe months after my brother’s the opposite direction: the P-38 Lockheed funeral, my dad would take long walks after Lightning with a twin tail-boom and the Navy work and on weekends in the woods and fields F4U Corsair of gull-wing design, the first near our house in all kinds of weather. He would American fighter to exceed 400 miles per hour. return sweaty, exhausted, shoes muddy, some- times clothes dripping wet. Sixty years ago, grief On one of the walls was a framed, full-color counseling was little-known; you handled death photograph of a Martin Mariner patrol bomber as best you could. (PBM) lifting off of water with the help of JATO (Jet Assisted Take Off). This heavy plane (gross Mom chose to grieve behind the closed door of weight: 60,300 lbs), which could take off from my big brother’s bedroom a few times each day, land or water, often needed extra thrust to get it perhaps hugging framed pictures of Don in his airborne as quickly as possible. An engineering Navy uniform or looking at group photos of the major in college, Don qualified for the Navy’s baseball teams. Maybe she reread his letters from Air Cadet Program and flew PBMs during the Japan, perhaps slowly tracing his handwriting Korean War. with her fingertips, touching what he had written. Or maybe Mom just sat, alone, on his All of the models were finished except one, a bed, looking around his room, remembering glider with tissue paper glued tightly on balsa moments of his childhood. My guess is that wood wings. The fuselage was bare. Don never somehow she was trying to hold Don very close returned to complete it since he died in a PBM to her for as long as possible before finally crash while on Korean patrol in August 1952. realizing, as weeks became months, that it was The reason: a defective altimeter, we were told time for dad to get a stepladder from the cellar by a Navy spokesman. None of the crew saw the and, together, they took down the planes that mountain they flew into that moonless night. flew beneath the ceiling of his room. A few weeks later Don was buried in a Hartsdale cemetery by my parents, my younger brother, me, other family members, friends, and a Navy honor guard firing rifles.

10 When by David Berger

What I said or did To him, to her— Or worse, Didn’t say or do— Can come to mind At any quiet time Or place.

“Oh, I know you,” I say To my done or undone thing When it comes As it has And does And will.

11 Portrait Head, by Mary Morgan

12 The Woman in the Chair by Joanne Lee Storlie

he ascent was not too difficult at first, though why she should be at this Tstrange place, stepping carefully over loose gravel and around larger stones, she did not know. All she knew was that she had to continue her climb up the increasingly steep grade ahead, which appeared to narrow into a path that disappeared between sheer, towering walls of gray granite. She looked around for others who might be traveling the same way or who, bet- ter yet, were returning from the place she was intent upon reaching, bearing maps, perhaps, to make the journey easier or advice regarding landmarks and pitfalls that lie ahead. But none were there. She was quite alone. And cold. The wind was picking up, bringing with it subtle hints of approaching rain. She was dressed in a sheer nightgown, the one she had shopped hurriedly for the week before, chosen because it complimented in style and color her slender but mature body and her light brown hair, cut and curled in a short style that suited her still youthful face. Why, she wondered, was she out on an evening like this, in a place so foreign and ominous, on a journey to an unknown destination? So occupied was she with the task before her, it never occurred to her that she could turn back—return to wherever it was she had come from. Indeed, so great was her compulsion to go on that past and future were obscured from thought and the here and now all that existed. She stumbled and fell, and rising, brushed cinders from her knees and hands. It was then she noticed that she wore sturdy leather boots with catgut laces and thick, rubber soles, deeply etched for gripping. She’d never seen them before and wondered, briefly, where they had come from and why she was wearing them. Had she known that an arduous trek lay ahead? And if so, why hadn’t she worn other protective garments as well? She reached the narrow walled-in pathway just as a chilling rain began. Driven by strong gusts of wind, it assailed her exposed flesh like hordes of hungry insects. Dark and forbidding as the path ahead appeared, the rugged and towering walls offered temporary shelter from the sleet, and she slipped hurriedly between them.

13 She immediately faced a sharp incline and found Careful not to awaken her lover, she reached over climbing as much hindered as helped by her to touch, ever so lightly, the firm smooth skin footwear. Needing both hands to feel her way of his broad shoulder. As her eyes adjusted to forward in the darkness and to grip whatever she the light, she saw his handsome profile, outlined could to pull herself up, her long gown continu- against the window and, as always, felt gratitude ally caught underfoot, frequently halting progress and wonder. and occasionally causing her to lose ground. How many months had it been now since they Thwarted in her ascent and unwilling to give up, had fallen in love? Twenty? Twenty-four? And in she was just beginning to panic when distant but that time, how often had they had the pleasure approaching voices cut through her desperation of spending an entire night together—in com- and lifted her from her task to… fortable secure surroundings, replete with an oversized bed that brought a measure of normality Darkness. and the luxury of greater abandon? Eight? “Who’s got the key?” a woman’s shrill voice Possibly ten? demanded. She moved closer to him and stretched herself “I gave them to Cal,” came a slurred reply. against his side, feeling the warmth of his naked body melt the last of the chill she brought with “I’ll get some ice while you party-animals find it,” her from her nebulous, nocturnal journey. Her another chided. senses, sharpened by her vivid and disturbing “Here’s the little bugger.” dream, became keenly aware of his rhythmic breathing and the lingering, familiar smell of his Raucous laughter and coarse conversation pipe tobacco, and she felt reassured. Burrowing accompanied the stumbling entry of a small, into him like a suckling animal, she sighed inebriated group of travelers into the room contently and recalled their evening together. across the hall. As usual, he had arrived first. The room was Meg lay quietly, striving to orient herself. Taking always reserved in his name since he had a deep breaths to calm her racing heart, she slowly legitimate reason for being there. For the past opened her eyes. The dim, pinkish light of a two years he had traveled frequently to this city halogen lamp filtered through a narrow gap to meet with the co-author of a textbook series between the inn’s partially closed drapes, bringing they were writing. Although the books were into focus innocuous pieces of bland, motel fur- now published, they still met to plan marketing niture and unmatched suitcases. Remembering strategies. His wife never questioned his need to where she was and happy to be snatched from spend an occasional weekend away. the clutches of a frightening, puzzling dream, she sent silent thanks to her noisy, inconsiderate rescuers and willed her body to relax.

14 She had arrived around eight, delayed by heavy categorizing in varying degrees of positive and traffic and winter roads. Never wishing to appear negative. Had she been able to simply look at over-eager to begin her trip, she had left work recent episodes in her life without such judg- at the usual time and stopped home to pick up ments, her steps might have been less militant. her suitcase, oversee dinner and make sure her As she deliberately jabbed each of her heels into husband and teenage daughter, the youngest of the unyielding surface beneath her, she imagined their four children and the only one yet living at the walkway to be a shock absorber for the cares home, would comfortably survive the weekend and concerns of those who traversed upon it— without her. During the past two years, they had thoughtfully and purposely provided by the tax- become accustomed to her infrequent, out-of- payers of the city—and felt the painful memories town “shopping trips,” an indulgence she had that surfaced somewhat drained from her body. never before permitted herself and one that they How long had she been playing this game of cheerfully, never grudgingly, granted. evaluation? The answer was simple. Ever since Rather than ask for his room number at the there was something to compare what was desk where suspicious eyebrows might be raised, normal and routine to something that was not. she always waited in the lobby for him to get Normal was abandoning childhood dreams to her. At first, this added to the excitement and marry at age eighteen the first man she had ever romance of their affair. But one time, when the known, bring four children into the world by wait was unusually long, she worried herself into the time she was thirty and become a stay-at- a frenzied state by imaging that his wife or one home mom. Normal was living in a blue-collar of his children might have accompanied him at neighborhood on a very limited income and the last minute, leaving him no time to contact pinching pennies to buy necessities. Normal was her. By the time he did appear with no excuse trying to find fulfillment in marriage, house- except that he was busy unpacking and making wifery, motherhood and childcare and failing phone calls, her mouth had become dry and miserably. Normal was discovering shortly after her muscles tense with the effort of contriving the wedding that the person she married did not a believable story to explain her presence to a share her deepest passions and interests and had surprised family member. After they were safely few of the communication skills necessary for settled in their room, she had excused herself to successful co-habitation. Normal was electing to take a walk—a practice common for her when stay in a marriage until the youngest child was stress levels became elevated—to work out of her old enough to understand the vagaries of life and system the adrenalin that fear had injected there. escape the scars of divorce that younger children often experience and retain for life. She chose, The walk over crowded sidewalks near busy she thought, a harder task—that of juggling two downtown thoroughfares had brought to mind worlds until life itself demanded a permanent a number of things she found herself unwillingly solution.

15 She was sure she had no guilt regarding the affair Two hours later, the heels of her new shoes had itself. Her long search for “absolutes” in life had paid the price of her renewed peace of mind, and led her down many paths—at times into serious she reentered their motel room with profuse and extended explorations of metaphysics, world apologies for worrying him. To his inquiries religions, philosophy and psychology on her own about what caused her abrupt departure, she and at other intervals into group experiences and vaguely mentioned a long day at work and dif- coursework that dealt with self-discovery. For her, ficult traffic and promised to talk about it later. all of these quests had added up to a certainty Why burden him with her uncertainties? They that when reverence and respect are present, spent the remainder of the evening wrapped in and no advantage sought or taken, love is never the protective, exclusive cocoon they had woven wrong. It simply IS—a non-judgmental, creative for themselves—a place they claimed for force that permeates, undergirds, IS everything. their own. Indeed, she had convinced herself that sharing a Meg drew in a deep breath, willing the bitter- part of their separate lives in no way jeopardized sweet memories that had earlier crowded her the relationship each had with their spouse and mind to relent, and drifted back into an that their love for each other had, in fact, im- uneasy sleep… proved the quality of stale, functional marriages, held together by mutual consent “for the sake She reached the top of the mountain where a of the children.” She was equally convinced that small, relatively level area, defined by a sheer their love was a gift from the Powers That Be— drop on all sides, was revealed in the retreating given when despair threatened to diminish any lightning. The rain had stopped, but the unre- hope for a more fulfilling life. Had it not started lenting wind continued. At the opposite end of innocently? A chance meeting. The discovery of the small platform, a fully-clothed, masculine common interests. Mutual respect and admira- figure stood, his collar turned up against the tion. Surely, it was meant to be. wind, his gaze directed away from her. He held a pipe to his lips, and his stance was aloof, sug- No, it wasn’t the affair that compelled her to gesting to her that he was not a stranger to these stalk the street as she was now doing or to pace heights. She shivered in her tattered gown and the floors of her home on occasions when sleep scuffed boots and was just attempting to call out wouldn’t come. It was the harsh judgment to him against the wind when she saw…it. society would place upon her behavior and the lies such behavior required—the “white” lies of It first it was but a shadow between them, commission and their silent deadly variation, lies barely discernible through the after-image of the of omission, which she always knew were the lightning. But as she approached, the shadow worst and felt most keenly. The former were, she took form and there, balanced on a cant, was a believed, quite innocuous. “I just need to get chair—a huge, grotesque caricature of a chair, away by myself for awhile.” “I have to work late solidly formed of heavy metal but distorted and tonight.” “It was a wrong number.” But the unnatural in some way. Unable to categorize or latter? “I love someone else”? define what she perceived, she moved closer, and

16 what she beheld drew an involuntary gasp from arrangement of metal bars, crushed into her her. The chair was supported by wheels—huge, chest, the upper angle wedging under her breast- cumbersome wheels—and strapped within the bone and the other points piercing her sides seat was a woman who somewhat resembled her. beneath her ribs. Pain seared through shoulders She, too, trembled in bedclothes that provided that were stretched beyond endurance, and fric- little protection from the howling elements tion destroyed flesh wherever two opposing forc- although hers were ornate and made of white es met. As the chair moved slowly but inexorably satin and lace and covered her from head to toe. forward, blood marked the surrendered ground. Her face was turned away from Meg and toward Anguish coursed through her when she realized the man, her arms raised in a gesture of supplica- that she could no longer hold the overwhelming tion, her upturned palms beckoning imploringly weight and save its silent, immobile occupant. to him. And utter despair engulfed her when she realized she couldn’t let go to save herself. “Who are you?” Meg stepped closer to see the woman’s face and she beseeched her oppressive, unsought burden. was no more than a foot away when the chair “Why are you here? What do you want of me? suddenly lurched forward. The sickening sound Please help me. Help us both!” of brakes locked in a deadly duel with gravity and acceleration filled the air. Instinctively, she Meg woke with a cry still clutching the phantom grabbed the handles at the back of the chair to chair—still feeling its metal brace press its form pull it to safe ground, but no surface provided a into her chest. Her lover, startled awake, bolted footing or offered a hold. The soles of her boots upright and reached for her. Gathering her into disintegrated as she jabbed them again and again his arms, he rocked her fervently, seeking to coax against the impermeable, unyielding ground. from her the terror that gripped her. “A woman,” she sobbed against him, “in a wheelchair… The seated woman made no attempt to assist or falling…down the mountain… so heavy… resist Meg’s efforts. Her neutrality seemed pur- can’t hold on…can’t let go…” Her body poseful and imposed an immense burden. For a convulsed, as she locked her arms around his few moments, Meg held her ground. But soon neck, still engaged in the life and death struggle. the cold of the metal handles penetrated her Then suddenly it slackened, as if she’d conceded hands and loosened her grip. In desperation, the fight and accepted defeat. Exhausted, she she threw her arms, one at a time, around the asked in a weak, tremulous voice, “Who is she, back of the chair and jammed her knees into Paul—the woman in the chair?” the frame, her feet extended backward to form a wedge of resistance. Dragging her feet, she Paul, in a hoarse, unsteady voice and halting attempted to oppose the approaching disaster words, answered, “Meg, my darling, my exqui- by adding her full weight to that of the chair. site agony, we both know who she is.” The backrest of the seat, braced by a triangular

17 The Adventures of Fredrich Barbarosa by Evelyn Rueckert

ur long-haired red dachshund was registered with the AKC as Fredrich OBarbarossa the 7th, but because he had a white mark on his powerful chest we called him Fleck. He was a loving pet so we forgave him when he nipped the mailman, and when the dogcatcher caught him twice in one week. Shortly before we were to leave for Russia he developed a spinal disease common to his breed. I couldn’t bear to have the little dog put to sleep, so the vet stitched him up and Fleck accompanied us to Leningrad. The tranquilizer we gave him at the beginning of the trip wore off before we left JFK. At the airport in Paris he was carefully transferred to an SAS plane, but when we debarked for a short stop in Stockholm I heard a plaintive bark from the cargo hold. Oddly enough, as they examined his papers the Russian customs officials never glanced into the kennel at the animal’s disfigured spine. The little dog enjoyed Leningrad’s pungent city smells as he poked a curious nose through the ironwork along the beautiful canals. Russians love dogs almost as much as they do children and I sometimes saw exotic breeds like Borzois and Wolfhounds being led along the Nevsky Propekt. Fleck hated the big white poodle named “Dagmar” who lived in an apartment above us and whenever her owners encountered us in the hall they would tighten their dog’s leash and cast pained expressions our way. We never understood how they kept that dog so clean! Once two drunken men who thought it was funny, threatened to kick my dog off the sidewalk. Whereupon, not for the only time during my Russian experience, something snapped and I shouted every profanity I had ever learned from the sailors in Norfolk! Stung by cadences familiar in any culture, they slunk away; but one came to pity all the drunken people. In the course of my ceaseless search for food I once tied Fleck to a tree outside the bread store. Having selected bread from grubby bins I was standing in the puddles made by melting snow, struggling to make myself understood by the cashier,

18 when I glanced through the window and saw a summer he disappeared for hours into the sur- drunk harmlessly attempting to pet Fleck, who rounding forest, but he always returned, unable misunderstood. Despite his alcohol-slowed to tell us about the wood sprites he encountered reflexes, the man managed to escape the dog’s there. In winter, because the snow was so deep sharp teeth. one of us carried the low slung pet from the car to the house. He hated the red rubber boots he We lived a block off the crowded Nevsky had to wear when we walked him on the city’s Prospekt and the little animal always balked icy streets. at being led in that direction. After our son foolishly walked him to the boulevard without Our pet caused several social catastrophes. a leash the dog disappeared into the crowd. The afternoon before one Leningrad party I When our son came crying home he found had to place a hasty food order because Fleck Fleck sitting in front of the door to the second had discovered a package behind the half-open floor apartment. His instincts were right, but refrigerator door. Unable to resist he ate an we lived on the third floor! entire kilo of filet mignon! Our guests left their wraps in a bedroom off the hallway and on one Each time there was a knock at the door, the occasion after the Finnish Consul had enthusias- little dachshund would race down the hallway, tically described how he had bought his beautiful barking as he slid on the parquet floor. However, fur chapka in China, all conversation stopped one evening when the children and I were alone when, wagging his tail, Fleck walked proudly in and someone pounded on our door, Fleck never with the hat in his jaws. made a sound. He was seemingly as bemused as when he discovered a snake in our Washington Despite our sometimes risky adventures we all garage. Not that he wasn’t brave. He once cowed came home safely and when Fleck was twelve a German shepherd at the vet’s office, causing years old he spent his last hours sniffing the the big dog to tremble with fear. summer breeze in our garden. In a tearful ceremony his little family buried his ashes On our drives to the Consulate’s country dacha there. Today our son speaks the language Fleck’s nose would twitch as we approached the fluently but the first Russian words we learned woods and water of the Gulf of Finland. In the upon arriving in Leningrad were “horochiya sobaka”—wonderful dog.

19 The Ninth Street Bridge by George Faunce Imagine that. The Atlantic Ocean was only sixty miles from our home in South Jersey. Driving at almost 50 miles per hour (a heady speed for us in the 1950s), our family car could reach the sweet spot in an hour and a half. The sweet spot was where the first traces of sea air began to filter through the windows. It signaled we were almost there. The last stretch of this pilgrimage involved a formidable challenge: the cross- ing of the Ninth Street Bridge. It was a narrow band of earth—an isthmus with a drawbridge—spanning two and a half miles from the mainland of southern New Jersey across the bay to Ocean City. The bridge stopped traffic continually throughout the day, slowly raising its two huge, metallic arms to allow sailboats access to and from the sea. It became a perpetual nightmare to shore visitors, with its flashing lights and annoying bells heralding each new delay. Drivers would break into a cold sweat as they approached the bridge, fearing to hear the very first clang of its accursed bell. The many that got caught would quickly go from cold sweat to physical and spiritual meltdown in the stultifying heat of their cars. Autos backed up for miles waiting for the bridge to reset itself, and often had to be rerouted when the drawbridge decided to get stuck in the up position, a not infrequent occurrence. The bridge had become, in essence, its own troll. It stood as a final, obstrep- erous barrier, mocking all who would dare aspire to reach the sea. Each time we headed to the shore, we crossed our fingers hoping that the bridge would spare us, letting our puny vehicle pass without opening its maw and waiting instead for bigger game. Mom and dad had jammed all four of their sons (Skip, Den, John and me) into the rear seat of the car. There were no seat belts in the 1950’s, so we were free to frolic around like monkeys back there. We were approaching an ocean, after all! To our fevered brains this was a huge enterprise to comprehend, something almost spiritual in import which required from us a response of equal kind. So we played a game.

20 As the Ninth Street Bridge approached we each We’re on the beach, our feet burning with each took a deep breath, determined to hold it all step through the hot sand. It is July, 1953. Older the way across the bridge and isthmus until we brothers Skip and Denis are hanging onto the reached Ocean City. Whoever held his breath beach umbrella, rocking its aluminum pole back the longest won the game. Because we were and forth to wedge it deeper into the sand. Its serious about this ritual, our rules also stipulated canvas top is a faded iris of green and white that if one couldn’t hold his breath the whole way stripes. Below it go the army blankets, dark across he would also DIE! This meant that even green and mud brown, that dad brought home the winner might end up being a loser—which from the war, and on the blankets go the cooler showed we had a keen grasp for young tykes of packed with food and a thermos of pink lemon- how life can so frequently unfold. ade. The seagulls and sandpipers that followed us in from the bridge begin to land around us Alas, always, always the bridge proved to be too like an entourage, demanding to be fed. Younger far and technically (by game standards) all four brother John and I work to smooth the sand of us were destined to “die” before our clanking, off the edges of the blankets. All the time we’re sputtering Oldsmobile reached the other side. eyeing the waves, judging their strength…their Such a loss. Such a sad, sad loss. Four little mon- danger…their majesty. keys dead upon arrival, swallowed in one tasty lump by a troll called the Ninth Street Bridge. Thousands of people share these three miles of beachfront between boardwalk and sea with us. It was worth it all, however—the long, tedious Swimmers by the hundreds will stagger out of drive in a hot, crowded car, the treacherous the ocean throughout the day and wander the bridge—just to get to the beach and spend the beach hopelessly lost, searching for their blan- day riding the waves. kets. Not only does the powerful undertow pull I remember Ocean City’s weather-beaten board- swimmers tens of yards down the shoreline from walk. Most of its two-plus miles of timber were where they entered, but it is a dizzying maze they planks gone grey from endless battles with wind, see when they re-emerge: a poppy field of beach rain and sea. In patches, though, there were pale chairs, coolers, rafts, bags, blankets and rainbow- white replacement boards so young with sap they colored umbrellas. Endless human bodies of strained at their nails. Beyond the boardwalk lay pink, white and various shades of brown sprawl a thin strip of beach being eaten away endlessly before them, fanning themselves, snoring, by the tides. making sand castles, throwing beach balls, slathering on suntan lotion, screaming at their Let me take you back there now… kids, fighting off seagulls, flexing their muscles or sashaying about as though they were the “Girls from Ipanema.”

21 It had been a struggle to get the four of us Here we wait, shivering in the icy grey sea, bob- ready to go this morning and dad made quite a bing up and down like corks. We keep squinting scene, threatening to change his mind because to see the beach and boardwalk. Both seem so we couldn’t get ourselves organized (and, yes, very far away now. The whole shore seems to rise because brother Denis and I were once again up and dip down in mesmerizing rhythm with pushing and shoving each other, getting ready our own movement in the waves. It’s as though for our daily set-to, something you could set nothing on the earth holds permanent anymore, your clock by). But finally dad relented and nothing is ever at rest. All around us is perpetual now here we are just seconds away from hitting undulation of earth and sea. the waves. We are determined to body-surf all This is a fundamental principle of Zen, I am morning. Then we will take a break to eat our told: that life is pure groundlessness, and that liverwurst and mustard sandwiches on Wonder all things are impermanent. What we’re doing bread and guzzle the pink lemonade in plastic here is surely something the old monks would cups, before running madly back into the water appreciate: a day at the beach riding the waves again to ‘take on’ the whole Atlantic Ocean. The and drinking pink lemonade in plastic cups in a Pure Immensity that it is. world of constant flux. Okay, stay with me. We’re entering the ocean. I am shivering now. The suspense is as palpable Very…very…very…cold. ! It’s best to do this as the goose bumps on my skin and the uncon- quickly. Just run as fast as you can and dive in! trollable chattering of my teeth. This endless Yes!!! waiting for the next big wave builds tension. Stealthily we start inching out further than the (Up and down we bob…up and down.) (The life guards want us to, treading water by kicking boardwalk and beach roll in unison, up and our little, goose-bumped legs. The guards will down…up and down.) Where is that power whistle us back in a few times this morning, and hiding? Where is the monster wave, the Big get annoyed with the lot of us for sneaking out Kahuna? yet again. But you have to go out as far as you can if you want some separation from the mind- The ocean seems so innocent at this moment. less crowd mulling about near the shore. Here is Almost placid, as though it is taking a nap. We where you catch the big waves and ride them at know, however, that it is only pretending, acting supersonic speed all the way to the shore (barring, sedate while it plots to catch us by surprise. We of course, collision with unsuspecting waders, also know this, of course, from years of experience; known as “collateral damage”). Sometimes mom, the ocean is always just a ripple away from who likes to float on her back in shallow water, is “losing it.” So…which subtle lift in the water- among the wounded when the four of us come scape behind us is suddenly going to congeal crashing in. into an argument and rise up like Godzilla in Tokyo Bay?!

22 It’s almost as though we’re being…watched… Our wee frames, pointed helplessly like shuttle- cocks, are trapped firmly in its grip as we fly (Up…and down) along. Bathers in our path frantically dive (Up…and down.) sideways left and right, as we are drilled toward them, their mouths forming the elongated O We’re being toyed with by something ancient and of a silent scream. brooding. It’s out there and it’s coming in, but… when? Just as we near the edge of land the wave swoops up one last time like the bottom curve of a water (Up and down…up and…) slide and we are taken back high into the air. WHOA! Did you feel that?! Then we are slammed down upon the shore’s edge with a Crrrash! Is it here?! Still not finished, the wave proceeds to push No… us up the beach a few…feet…more, wedging …hold on…No…I’m sorry…false alarm… us into the loose, damp sand at the very point where the hot granules meet the wet. Having …and yet… thus deposited us like broken clam shells for wait…oh yes… the gulls, it snorts disdainfully, turns its back and vanishes once again into the PURE IMMENSITY this has got to be it…this is it…whoa, whoa, stretching beyond. whoaaa! We lie on the sand for a moment in shrinking An immense, round-shouldered wave suddenly puddles, dazed and coughing. Stinging salt water rears UP behind us out of nowhere! bubbles from our noses. Then, as the tide re- With silent ease it lifts us with it as it swells to a treats, even this thin film of sea is stripped away terrifying peak. We are in the front boxcar of an from our bodies like the last drops of a soft drink ocean roller coaster tipping over the edge of the sucked through a straw. It is time for the police world. Aaaaaaand WHOOooooosh! to draw the chalk lines around our wee remains and put up the crime scene tape. Down it explodes, in a furious, frothing, head- long rush toward the beach! Heavens, what a dénouement. Up, corpses, up! We’re heading back in!

23 Years later, in 1998, I once again found myself Now, it was no longer a game, but the onslaught sitting in a car approaching the Ninth Street of time and diminishment; it marked the begin- Bridge. This time, however, I was the driver ning of the undertow that slowly, or abruptly, and oldest brother Skip was my passenger. It takes all of us out to the sea. Skip was being was winter. We were there no longer to ride the ravaged by diabetes and his blood sugar had waves, but to visit our father. Dad was living crashed, ironically enough, halfway across the alone on Fifth Street in Ocean City in a senior infamous old bridge. In the years soon to come housing apartment. Mom had died in 1994 and Skip would lose the ability to drive a car and dad had chosen to live out his final days by the would find himself confined for the most part to sea. Being in his eighties though, he needed a wheelchair. In July of 2003, funeral services for regular checking-on. Brothers Denis and our dad would be held in Ocean City; all four of John had moved west decades earlier; Den to his sons, the former “backseat Oldsmobile California, John, eventually, to Oregon. But monkeys,” would once again cross the Ninth Skip and I were still Jersey boys, and we were Street Bridge to attend his final viewing. doing another shore pilgrimage on this day. But on this day in 1998, as Skip ate a candy bar As we drove the last mile across the Ninth Street and tried to regain equilibrium, I sat beside him Bridge, I sensed again the presence of grey in the car realizing how it had been more than seagulls swirling in the sky at the edge of my four decades—forty long years—since we boys vision, and remembered the childhood game all had played the game of hold-your-breath on four of us used to play. Skip suddenly grabbed the bridge. Over four decades later and still we my arm and asked in a shaky voice for me to pull couldn’t make it the full distance from mainland over. Quickly! I guided the car as fast as I could to shore. The Ninth Street Bridge, I realized, onto a shoulder of the isthmus. Skip sat beside would forever be a “bridge too far” for us. me dizzy now, ready to pass out. Note: The Ninth Street Bridge was finally As kids we had always gotten dizzy on that marked for demolition in 2011 and replaced just bridge, holding our breath. All the old this past year with a super causeway, its spans Hollywood movies had taught us one had to high enough to let boats pass underneath with- pay a steep price to climb the Matterhorn, to out disruption of traffic. The much maligned discover Shangri-La, to defend the Alamo, to bridge of old had taught generations of adults champion Camelot, or to elude the Troll and and their children the meaning of patience (if reach the Ocean City peninsula. And of course not utter desperation). Now it is suddenly being we each ultimately succumbed and let our breath eulogized in local newspapers by people grown out in long, wheezing sounds like punctured bal- nostalgic for the days gone by. We who no longer loons. It was all great fun back then, our young ride the waves with much grace or hold our bodies and young lungs only playing at being breath except in traffic, find ourselves somehow… overwhelmed by life. missing…the old, cranky troll. Imagine that.

24 Men on Scaffolding by George Faunce

Men on scaffolding. One is holding brush and paint, re-coloring a wall, high up in an atrium, above a marble floor; AND… One is rubbing rag and squeegee on the corporate glass, strung above the city at the 37th floor; AND… One is bound by handcuffs, with a noose around his neck, on a platform where he stands alone before some witnesses.

Men on scaffolding. All three already in extreme; in air too rarified for them, a place they shouldn’t be, defying laws of gravity by artificial means; for which they’ll make amends, someday.

In a gust of city wind, perhaps, the scaffold tilts and sways; its pulley cable splits apart, the wires giving way. The painter reaches out too far, and slips when twisting back. The trap door underneath the noose drops open with a snap…

And all the men on scaffolding come home at last.

25 Rose, by Kenneth Richardson

26 Social Graces by Richard Radtke

hree events punctuated the routine of 1948, my tenth summer. TPresident Truman came to town on his special train. Babe Ruth died, putting an end to the notion of immortality. And I had a dinner date with an older woman. In a picture out of memory, I stand before the bedroom mirror, feeling the rise and fall of my own breath. In the yard, a lawn mower clicks as somebody else’s father tends to chores. My own father is long gone. The boy in the mirror tends to the knot in his plaid tie. As I struggle with my cowlick, my mother hums along with the radio. Each evening the music from our Crosley drifts across the kitchen while she irons. “My young man,” she says when she comes to fetch me. We step out into the back hallway where I wait while she locks the door with a long shiny key. We arrive at the restaurant as the light behind the Kegel’s Inn sign comes alive. My mother points to it as though it has been lighted in our honor. Inside, a round man with a foreign accent leads us to a table in the dining room. “Enjoy, Missus.” He holds the chair for my mother. I wonder if she has been here with other men. A sweet secret smell hangs like sugar in the air, crabapples or corn just boiled in a pot on the stove. Now a large woman in a frilly apron comes to our table carrying two large menus. I open the card and find lists of strangely-named food: beef rouladen, wienerschnitzel, spaetzle. No mention of the magic word: hamburger. “Ground sirloin,” my mother says. She smiles, sips her ice water, winks. Before me is a collection of knives, forks and spoons that would shame our kitchen silverware drawer. As I try to figure out the uses of all this hardware, the waitress returns, carrying a basket of rolls. She places it on the table, removes a pad and pencil from her apron pocket, and asks: “Ready to order, Ma’am?”

27 I hide my hands under the table, elbows close to My mother asks for the check, then beckons to my body. My fingers play with the edge of the me. She leans forward, both her hands under the starched white tablecloth. Grandma Felkner says table. I slip my own hands under the tablecloth people who put their elbows on the table marry to meet hers. “Here,” she says, placing a wad of crazy people. money into my hand. “The gentleman takes care of the bill.” “We’re ready,” my mother says. The center of attention shifts to me. It is like giving a talk in I withdraw my hands and count a five-dollar bill school. Heat rises under my collar as I point and five singles. to the ground sirloin and mumble the name. “Take the check from the waitress,” she says. Laughter and low voices seep from the con- “Make sure it is correct. Then leave your money necting bar room. A beery odor mixes with the on the table. She’ll bring back your change.” It crabapple smell. My stomach rumbles. happens exactly as she said it would. The bill “The silverware has a particular use,” my mother lists the food we ordered, soup to dessert. Seven says. “Begin at the outside and work your way dollars and sixty-five cents. This is why we eat toward the center. This fork is for salad. The big supper at home. When the waitress brings the spoon on the other side is for soup. The smaller change my mother whispers: “Now leave a one is for coffee.” tip. The bill was seven sixty-five,” she explains. “Leave at least ten percent of that. Fifteen percent My Pepsi comes in a glass filled with ice cubes. if the service was very good.” And the hamburger—with a bun the size of a catcher’s mitt—is big as a kitchen clock, loung- I’ll need pencil and paper to figure this out. ing over a large leaf of lettuce and surrounded Percent? We’ve only just begun to study percent by deep red tomatoes and a green pickle. Now, at school. “Move the decimal point,” she says. nearly every table in the room has been claimed “Ten percent of seven sixty-five is seventy-six by people talking, waving, calling to one of the cents. It’s simple.” three waitresses who are running like relay racers Five minutes later we step outside into the fading under enormous trays of food. light of dusk. “Thank you for dinner, sir,” she “People eat late here,” I say. We usually eat early jokes. “It was a delightful evening.” so that I can get back outside for a quick game Babe Ruth died that summer. And President of baseball or kick the can. The light fades until Truman came to town on his special train. But mothers appear like ghosts behind screen doors, for me, the event of the season was my dinner calling kids inside for a bath and bed. with an older woman.

28 Mother’ s Day by William G. Ladewig

he sun flashed into my face off the silver wing as the plane began to circle Tand find its runway. I glanced over at my fellow passenger, who was oblivious to the process and sat slumped over with his mouth slightly open, drool sliding out. I probably should have been courteous and awakened him, but if he was like me, he probably preferred not being awake for landings. I looked out the window at the Wisconsin countryside and recognized the clock on the Allen Bradley building and the bridge going into downtown Milwaukee. Things hadn’t changed in the last ten years since I had been here. I had grown up in the suburbs about fifty miles away. A place they called Allenton, but should have been called “Dullsville.” It had a school, a church, two gas stations and a grocery store. It had a park where the firemen came to drink beer and throw horseshoes. I hated it. I knew that when I got out of school I would never live there. Besides that, Dad was there then. What a bastard. Mom tried to protect us girls, but when he got drunk, he would do what he wanted. No, it wasn’t that “sexual abuse” you read about in the papers. It was old-fashioned German “meanness,” with no understanding of what needs young girls had. He was okay when he was sober, but that was only before seven o’clock every night. He would go to work in the factory in West Bend, come home every evening, start with one beer, and then the yelling would begin, “Girls, bring me another one.” If we weren’t fast enough, we would feel the hand of Thor. More than once, Mom tried to control him, only to get the brunt of his temper. I went to nursing school at Oshkosh. I paid my own way by taking out loans and working as an aide at a local nursing home. Upon graduation, I moved out and went to New York. I never looked back. Dad was dead three months later. I came back for the funeral but hadn’t been back since.

29 The landing was smooth. I got the big lug next She was right, of course. Why had I stayed away to me moving with a poke in his ribs and we so long? Dad was dead. Mom had never done were quickly on our way. I saw my sisters, Kathy anything to me. Maybe that was the reason. and Elaine, waiting for me at the end of the Mom had never done anything! Memories can corridor. No big sign like in the movies, just big be awfully powerful when they affect your life smiles. Ten years was a long time. I put my arms like mine had. I wasn’t married. In fact I rarely out and we hugged, like only sisters can do. The dated. The idea of being with a man for the rest tears welled in my eyes and were flowing like a of my life filled me with loathing. Not the sex gusher, before I noticed the others had them too. part, nor having kids. I knew I still wanted that, We did the mandatory, “How are you’s?” and but I wasn’t going to give up control of my life then went arm in arm down the hallway to get to another human being, and certainly not to my luggage. We made a quick exit to the car and a man. left the parking structure, with Elaine driving. The house was just like every other house on “How bad is it, Kathy?” I asked, from the front the block. It hadn’t changed in years. Kathy’s seat, to my sister sitting in the back. husband kept it up. They had lived with Mom and taken care of her for the last five years. I sent “It’s not good. She was in a lot of pain for awhile money on a monthly basis to help care for Mom, and then the doctor started to give her morphine. but I knew that they had borne the brunt of liv- That seemed to help, but she seems to be getting ing with her. They had three kids and I imagined worse. She’s competent sometimes and then that they had been a handful for Mom to put other times she just doesn’t seem to be registering.” up with as she had gotten older. There they were I nodded, thinking of all the cancer patients that by the garage waiting for me in anticipation. I had taken care of during the years. I thought One of the boys had a basketball in his hands of the emaciated look because they couldn’t keep and it looked like they had been having a game. their food down and how just an ice cube could Elaine’s husband, Dan, was sitting by the picnic help the soreness of their throats. “Does she table drinking a beer. know that I’m coming?” I asked. I was introduced to my nephews and my niece Elaine looked over at me as she answered and by way of Elaine, and in the living room I got swerved past a slow-going SUV in her way. “You out the souvenirs I had brought from New York. know, she’s the one who asked us to get you. She There’s something about a t-shirt with an apple said it was time. I guess she thought you should on it that kids like. They quickly pulled them see her at least once before she died, and it has on over their own shirts and were back in the been too long.” driveway for a game of “horse.”

30 Kathy and I went up to see Mom. She was in sation with Mom. I wished it didn’t have to be the guest room. Kathy had taken over the big like this, but I really didn’t think I’d be able to bedroom for the kids. She just had a sheet on her stand it here any longer. “Memories, you know,” and she looked so fragile, thin, emaciated and saying it to no one in particular. brittle, just like every one of my patients. The next morning flew by as I walked to church “Hi Mom!” I said as I put her hand in mine. She with the kids and went by the only grocery store looked up at me, as if she recognized me, and in town, an IGA. Were there any more of these squeezed my hand. “You remember?” She shut in the country? her eyes, as if the effort to look at me and to Sunday afternoon came fast and it was time to recognize me was too much. leave. Kathy and I were in the upstairs bedroom “I remember, Mom. I came back. I love you, and she came and hugged me, squeezing me, Mom. I wouldn’t stay away.” I bent down and and in a blurted sound thanked me. gave her a kiss on her forehead. I got my purse and went into Mom’s bedroom to I joined the family in the living room and soon say good-by. She was there and I could see the we were catching up on our lives. Kathy pre- grimace on her face, a sort of rictus that came pared dinner, and after a pot roast that reminded from pain. She was struggling with her cancer. me so much of Mom’s cooking, we left the din- There was no hope. It was only a question of ing room table and sat down. We then proceeded time. I bent down and kissed her. “Good-by to demolish three bottles of wine and a lifetime Mom, I remembered.” of memories. I pulled the needle out of my purse. I found her “When are you going back?” Kathy asked. vein and tried to be gentle. She had suffered so much already. She had made me promise. “I have a reservation for tomorrow evening. I I talked to my sisters and they agreed that I have to be back for my evening shift on Sunday was the logical one to do it. I just never thought night” I said, thinking about our telephone con- that I would give her the “gift of peace” on versation three weeks ago and my phone conver- Mother’s Day.

31 Reverie, by John Hoffman

32 Incarnations by Norman Leer

“…it was clear that the full, embodied disclosure of God to men and women was not only multiple in time and place, but potentially infinite.” —Diana L. Eck Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993. p. 82 1 The rain keeps being gray. The trees are skeletons of sky. On the beach we find a dried plant, a thousand years old, bones of some extinguished animal, hardened into dust. It is summer. No one sits outside the shops. In the light my face darkens like a fossil, dangles like old string.

2 There are so many greens. Each leaf is a line of music; deep notes warm to yellow in the sun, then disappear again in silent shadows. Each color focuses a moment, gives it shape and weight and transience. The leaves bend and blur, violins and cellos coalescing, aching, and then gone.

33 3 This is silver you can see through, more a film, or nothing. Light suspended, yellow spreading from a sun that is not there yet. If you could see your eye seeing, it would look like this.

4 The petals of the ocean are light and darker blue and fall off in the sun. A burst of berry is elusive, the whisper of a flower where you have to be up close, inside the louder wind.

5 Ice cream inside colored ice, surprising double sweetness. The orange sky runs down the outside of a warm glass.

6 Your shirt waved to me from the bus window, leaving purple pollen on my hands. Residue of lavender, softly fragrant in the humming of the garden, gaily indicating your return.

34 7 In the pipe tobacco light of Far’s apartment, he takes out two sepia photographs, you at age one, smiling through thinning finger stains, himself around twenty, a small town handsomeness, impossibly clear and unknowing. Four clocks, wooden on the wall, dispute time, their sound brown like old pictures.

8 On windy days, the sea turns cobalt blue; heavy waves compress the water. White caps flutter in the air. A gull rises from the liquid flock, carrying the sun.

9 The sleeping town is slate gray, a place you pass through on a train without seeing it. There is only your own waking and a few faint lights of something else. Across the water, the first sun is thin yellow, too transparent for the town that is only passing by.

35 10 From a chalk and feathered Danish church, the organ lifts the gray sun softly, feeds it, and flies quietly away.

11 We could only stare: the lines of lavender and teal as solid as a painted wall. They hung there for an hour, as if the sky were like this all the time. Above us, swirls of red billowed like Giacometti birds, all bodied in the air so I could touch them. I felt the colors in your hand. The wind was purple, turning dark; late that night it rained.

12 The beauty of gray days is that there is very little separation. The sea looks like the shore; the shore looks like the sky. If there is a fog, there are no lines between them. God could be the color of gray days, the birds and trees shadows of shadows, the world quiet, incomprehensible, just happening.

36 13 They are pieces of sky, the red hyben berries dotting the beach. They hang between the sand and khaki grass like tiny stars, focusing the yellow and the dark blue spaces of the sea.

14 The wet clouds over the water are streaked with yellow green like a painting turned inside out. Only the background colors show, residues of all the evenings when the ripe sky hung like overflowing fruit.

15 A patch of rust surprises in the sand. The dark red gathers in the cobalt of the sea. So many shades of green stick up here and there; it is impossible to pray to just one name.

16 The sand shifts and balances: layers of beige, wind-walked, spotted with worn stones, some as yellow as an all-day rain. The rubbed brown grasses are old linen. Red bursts of berries weave between the reeds and sky. The wider blues contain and free the shore, the air alive, all the incarnations of itself. 37 The Goat That Got Their Goat! by Ellen Maurer

n 1917, my dad, Frank, was one of 11 children, growing up on a IPennsylvania farm. One of the family’s animals was a big white billy goat that often got loose and was in trouble. They had to watch him when they did laundry because he pulled the clothes off the line. Once he got very sick from drinking a bucket of whitewash he thought was milk! One warm spring day, Frank’s mother, Jennie, and his sisters were doing the seasonal housecleaning. They had the carpets hung over the clotheslines and were beating them to remove the dust. Some of the girls were doing wash; others had the screens outside and were cleaning them. The windows were open, and they were airing out the house. In the midst of all the activity, Jennie noticed movement in one of the upstairs windows. She looked up and was horrified to see the goat standing on the bed eating the curtains! Another time, when Frank was six, he got into trouble. Attached to the fam- ily’s main farmhouse was a back porch with a covered walkway connected to the summer kitchen, where they did canning and baking in the summer to keep from heating up the house. There was no electricity for fans and air conditioning had not been invented yet. The summer kitchen had a big table where they set pies and cakes to cool. That day, Frank’s mother had baked a batch of big sugar jumble cookies and spread them out to cool on the table. In the evening as the family finished eating supper, Jennie sent one of the girls out to the summer kitchen to get some cookies for dessert. She came running back to report that someone had taken a bite out of almost every cookie! Frank’s dad was really angry at the waste and accused the boys most likely of an age to have pulled this prank—Frank and Stanley. They said they didn’t do it, but somebody had. Their dad didn’t believe them and spanked them anyway.

38 After things calmed down, Jennie went out to see Another time, Frank’s older brother, Alvin, who if she could salvage some of the cookies for des- was in his early 30s had come home for a visit in sert. When she got to the summer kitchen, there his new 1934, two-door Pontiac that he was very was the billy goat with his feet on the table, tak- proud of. It had a big long hood that he had all ing a second bite out of the cookies! Frank’s dad shined up to a high gloss. Everyone admired felt bad, but the deed was done—he had already his car before they went in to dinner and a spanked the boys. good visit. In the muddy spring, Frank and Stanley thought Later, when they opened the door to go outside, they’d get even with that rascally billy goat. They everyone was shocked to see that Alvin’s beauti- tied him up to the t-bar handle of their wooden ful car was deeply scratched and skinned up. coaster wagon, got in, and used a little switch to And there on the shiny hood proudly stood the drive him through a big deep mud hole. They big white billy goat! wanted to see him get bogged down in the mire. Now, we’re not sure who did it, but all of a sud- With the switch, he went along at a good clip den, there was a huge, “Boom!” Someone shot until he got to the mud hole. Then he took a fly- that billy goat right off the hood, and that was ing leap, overturned the wagon, and dunked the the end of him! boys in the deepest part. The goat won! That was a joke that backfired!

39 O Give Me a Word: The Disciplined Life by Marnie Schulenburg

8:10 a.m. Plop your butt down in the office chair. Hover over the keyboard. What shall you write for your group? You gaze out the window, chin tipped thoughtfully, and think: better walk that dog first; it looks like rain. 8:17. Just a little sprinkle out here and luckily, you wore a hooded jacket. Keep going, then. The knee is better, the dog is surging out strong at the end of the leash. Take a little more time, why not, never been down this street. 9:20. Well, a girl’s gotta eat. You’ll think of something to write while you cut up this banana and add some yogurt and sprinkle in some nuts and a little of that ground-up flaxseed that’s supposed to be good for something that might ail you. 9:25. Big grinding noise up the street, what’s up with that? You wander over to the window with your yogurt gamush and watch as the Luck family loses most of their diseased maple. They’re having the whole thing taken down. Wow. You eat slowly, smiling to see four rabbits in your garden. Your husband actu- ally believes his ‘liquid fence’ spray is working and you’re not going to tell him otherwise. Someone hollers and your attention is drawn back to the tree. It took over fifty years to grow that high and spread that wide, you calcu- late. Maybe five hours to bring it down? There’s something profound in that thought. Some stirring nugget you can tease out for your group. It shouldn’t take too long. You look at your watch. Just past 9:30. Hey, plenty of time. Time enough for the crossword puzzle. 10:18. Done with the puzzle, except for the upper-right section, which would be filled in if you knew a word for “Gothic arch.” Your best buddy-o Chris would know. You could email her.

41 Anyway, better check out the refrigerator con- 11:38. Back in your office and good to go. You tents before you get back to the computer. The don’t believe in The Muse—what you believe in, way the sky looks, and the sting of cold in the as a writer of some experience, is discipline! You air, it’s a certainty you won’t be able to bike to will not allow yourself that teamwork email until Hannah’s for your meeting. So it’s logical to plan you’ve written something. Again: butt planted in a grocery stop afterwards and to make out a list chair, hands hovering over the keyboard. now. That way, you don’t have to interrupt your Cool! There go the wild turkeys stepping single- writing once you’re downstairs in your office. file across your backyard. There used to be nine, You catch an odor of something foul in the now it’s down to four. Either they’ve split up refrigerator. The best thing would be to roust by gender, or the coyotes are tougher than you it out immediately. Trash pick-up is on Friday; think. It’s been fun to watch them grow. Why do what if you forget and have to live with that they walk in a line like that, you wonder? You stink for another week and a half? drift outside in the mild drizzle with a cup of coffee, shadowing the turkeys cautiously through 11:20. There! How nice to have that refrigerator the grass. It’ll just take a minute, this extended clean again. A slow leak from the milk carton left observation, and it’s a writerly minute, after all; one of those stubborn gray patches on the glass you’re interested in their peculiar gait. There’s a shelf, which required some vinegar to scrub free, perfect word for how these turkeys are moving and as long as the vinegar is out, why not de- but you can’t quite find it. A poem! Perhaps you calcify the coffee maker? There’s nothing worse could write a poem about turkeys and wildness in the morning when you’re raring to get to your and civilization and birth and death. Okay, this writing and you have to wait for the last drip is good, you like it, you’ve even got a title: “Get drip drip of the coffee. in Line to Die.” Or not. Isn’t that somewhat 11:35. Look at that struggling cuticle on your shallow? Misleading, if what you’re after is the injured finger. You were supposed to be tending existential dilemma of it all? to that at least once a day. Okay, you need your 12:35. Well, that took longer than you thought it glasses for that, and the cuticle pusher-backer. would. Your socks were wet, you had to change What is that little dealie called, anyway? Maybe them. The coffee had cooled, that meant another you should just look it up, along with the word trip upstairs. Really, it takes no time at all to for “Gothic arch.” cruise through your email and decide what needs No. That would be cheating. Consulting with answering and what can wait. And whoops, you your friend long-distance, however, is not cheat- find a message from an agent and how interest- ing. It’s teamwork. That will require hustling ing that it barely interests you. back downstairs to your office and the computer, steps in the right direction.

42 Broom by Paula Novotnak

Webs of dementia spun thick and sticky and now a stroke. Her jaw’s slack, mouth gaping. The skin yellows, taut over the bones of her face.

Her tongue is thick; she slurs. Her left side curls like a stiff fetus or, cramped, clasps an empty memory.

Her thoughts, once a school of fish, are reduced now to one or two, pale and flabby, bobbing belly-up on the lapping waves of her fear.

A mess of confusion eclipses the light. As a child on the farm she was lively and quick. She was bright, intelligent.

When I look in the mirror I see her face. I admit, sometimes it scares me

or if not that recalls the quickening hand sweeping across the face of time.

40 What can it matter now if you grab just one write? You check your watch. You’ve got—oh my more fast minute to email Chris about solutions gosh. Only an hour before you need to leave for for the word “arch”? She’s a crossword nut and your writer’s group and what have you to share? her Seattle paper gets the same syndicated puzzle. Zero, zip, nada! She’ll have figured it out by now. 1:35. Your e-mail goes ding! dissolving your 12:45. Your notes from yesterday’s church coun- artistic focus on the blank blank page. You might cil session are sitting right there on your desk. as well check, maybe it’s Chris with an answer to Often you wait an entire week before writing “Gothic arch.” them up as minutes. You figure, do it now, while It isn’t. Someone named Gloria wants to increase it’s all fresh in your mind, and think of the time the size of your penis. You don’t own one of it will save. those. 1:20. You’re sure that poets don’t use comput- Hell, you’ll check out the options for “arch” ers for the first draft. That’s why you settle at yourself in your crossword puzzle dictionary. You the window seat, arranging pillows behind you, find that one of them—h-a-n-c-e—can’t even be yellow pad on your knees. The neighbor’s cat found in Webster’s. Here’s another, though, with streaks across your peripheral vision. They call the right number of letters. it Carrot. Carrot the Killer is more like it. You’re convinced that the cardinal nest outside your You are, in this bright and shining moment, office window has been empty for days because seized by a courageous impulse. You will live the mama cardinal was stalked and eaten by that large. The word “ogive” looks right to you. Using horrid orange cat. pen—not pencil—you inscribe each letter in its little square—O-G-I-V-E. You stand back. There, Okay, you think. Concentrate here. Stalking you think. You’ve written something. Not too turkeys, stalking cat, circle of death…wasn’t that creative. Not a story. But a word. A beginning. close to the theme of this poem you’ve chosen to

43 Swimming with Stingrays, by Julie Richardson

44 Twisting in the Wind by Wil Selbrede

glance at the young man standing next to the blonde in the back. So far I during the tour, not a hint of recognition from Omar. Maybe it’s my tinted glasses, or the twenty pounds I gained since I stopped working out. It’s been five, no, six years since— “What does it say on the banner up there?” asks the blonde, pointing to the painting in the center of the ceiling. Electrical impulses shoot through my brain’s central processing unit. Should I pretend I can’t read it? No, too dangerous. I decide to guts it out. “Doctrina vincit omnia—knowledge conquers all.” My eyes are on Omar as I translate. “Is that Latin?” asks the blonde. “Yes,” I respond. Omar’s body language is noncommittal. So far, so good. The blonde persists. “Will you read me the others, please?” I could fake ignorance, pretending I really know only a smattering of Latin and only had the one saying memorized. But word might get back to the boss somehow. Omar’s father, standing next to him in the small group, is watching me carefully. He might casually mention something to the big boss. That could raise embarrassing questions. Vijay Verma is not to be taken lightly. A Washington power, a major financial contributor on both sides of the aisle. Big man in Pennsylvania owns half a dozen nursing homes; is spending big bucks lobbying Congress for favor- able treatment in the tax package going through the House Ways and Means Committee. He got his congressman to set up this special tour of the Library of Congress, and the Librarian stuck me with the job, as usual. Just one of the crap jobs dumped on the newest member of the staff. I hesitate a moment, then guts it again, smoothly translating the Latin and explaining the symbolism of the paintings, then hurry through the condensed version of my standard lecture on this splendid suite of rooms, normally off-limits to the great unwashed. “This room was the office of the Librarian of Congress from the time of construction of the Thomas Jefferson Building in 1897 until the James Madison Building next door was built in 1980. The paneling and trim are American oak. The ceiling paintings are by some of the fifty or so artists that worked on the magnificent Great Hall, the Public Reading Room and throughout the building...” I hurry on, anxious to get away.

45 Then my hands get sweaty as I remember: the room as I point out the exquisite murals over next room, the last and best on the VIP tour, is the fireplaces at each end, the rich mahogany the old Congressional Reading Room, with an- paneling, the ancient tapestries on the long wall other dozen paintings on the ceiling and another opposite the windows and finally, the ceiling dozen Latin phrases to translate, if someone asks. paintings, done in the same Italian Renaissance I’m sure not going to volunteer. I steer the group tradition as those in the Librarian’s office. It is my through the suite’s small kitchen, point out the favorite room in the Library of Congress complex, narrow circular stairway leading to the balcony a room that exudes the subdued elegance and qui- lined with empty book shelves that surrounds et power of the exclusive men’s club it once was. I two sides of the office. I ease toward the door. glance at my watch. “This completes our special “This about wraps up the Librarian’s Office. Any tour. If you have any questions before we— questions?” Omar stirs, starts to open his mouth, “Yes,” said the blonde, pointing upward. “What changes his mind, shakes his head, and gives me does the Latin say?” a look that makes my toes curl with the memory of the past. With controlled haste, I walk down the middle of the room, rapidly translating. Before there can I lock the door behind me and lead my entou- be another question, I tap my watch. “I’m afraid rage through the Great Hall corridors, snaking I have other duties to perform at this time. It has our way around a large tour group huddled been a pleasure to have you with us today.” The around one of our regular docents. I pause last to leave is Omar, who walks by, then turns briefly as we pass our new William Tyndale and burns me with his eyes. “Nice translations,” exhibit on the English Bible, urging my guests he says quietly, “You haven’t lost your touch.” to come back for a good look after our VIP tour, He turns on one heel. My stomach is churning then I unlock the door to the hall leading to as he walks away. the old Congressional Reading Room. Omar’s mother, resplendent in a crimson sari and a The next afternoon I’m sitting in my loft apart- cascade of gold jewelry enters first, and I have a ment, cleaning my fly rod and sorting my tackle chance to read her eyes as she passes me. Good, box, getting ready for my usual Sunday morning no recognition. My mind raced back to my trip on the Harley to the Blue Ridge Mountains years of teaching in Philly. An uncompromising and my favorite trout stream. I hear the ancient lady, quiet but exceptionally tough in our few freight elevator rattle to a stop and, a moment meetings at Phelps. Upper crust Brahmin from later, my bell. My gut tells me who’s there. I don’t Calcutta, doctorate in something or other. get many visitors. “Omar?” I unlock the door. “This room was known as the Congressional Reading “Hello…Blair. May I still call you that? It’s been a Room until a few years ago. It was a place where while, hasn’t it.” members of Congress could conduct personal I suck in a breath as I stare into those familiar research. Now the room is called the Congressional dark eyes and hear my first name roll from his Retreat and is used mainly for receptions and public lips. His modulated baritone sweeps the dust relations functions by members of Congress...” The from the closet of my memory “A while, Omar.” group listens impassively to my lecture, flowing I fight for time with a question, my heart beating slowly, like mindless sheep, through the huge rapidly. “How did you find me?” 46 He shrugs. “Fairly simple. I just had to make one Philadelphia where I spent nine years teaching phone call from Dad’s office. You can get any- Latin and Greek to spoiled rich kids. A career I thing you want in Washington if you have the loved. Down the tube, because of him. I swallow right connections. And my father has the best.” hard and shrug. “I got over it. It’s history. Why can’t you leave it alone?” “I thought at first you might not recognize me. If it hadn’t been for that skinny blonde girl, maybe Omar looks uncomfortable for the first time. you wouldn’t.” “What do you do at the Library of Congress?” he asks, glancing away. Omar sinks into my overstuffed couch and props his feet on the glass and wrought iron coffee I play his game: “What do you think, young lover?” table. “Maybe, maybe not. I was about to vol- He ignores the dart to the heart. “Something to unteer my own translation when you spoke up. do with Latin and Greek, I suppose.” When I heard your perfect Latin, I looked more closely.” He glances around the loft. “Impres- “More or less. I’m staff assistant to the chief sive.” He points to the rod in my hand. “Still archivist for ancient books and documents.” I set into fishing, I see.” During spring break, when my empty glass down, fighting the anger in my his parents were in Europe and the Mayflies breast. “I couldn’t get a job teaching anymore, were hatching, we took his mother’s Porsche you know. I sort of like it. It’s a living anyway. to Glencove Creek and I taught him to fly cast. Doing VIP tours is just one of my tacky tasks.” And other things... Omar looks shocked. He compliments me with “The blonde yours?” I ask. a moment of silence before he responds. “I didn’t know. Really I didn’t. When they kicked you out He shakes his head. “Works in my father’s of Phelps I thought you’d land another teaching Philadelphia office. Public relations, I think.” job somewhere, no sweat. You’re a great teacher. Omar removes his Gucci’s from my coffee table, Made Latin and Greek come alive. All the kids waves his arm around the room. “The paintings loved you.” —they look like van Gogh. Your work? I remember you liked him a lot.” “Except you, Omar.” “Yes they are, and thanks. I try. He’s my inspira- “I loved you too.” tion.” I bring out my favorite dry sherry and The accusation wells from deep inside. “So why pour each of us a stiff glass. I offer a silent salute did you attack me?” with my glass. Anger at the old hurt starts in my gut and gets to my throat. “So why are you here, The scene flashes before my eyes. A Friday after- Omar, to finger me again to the authorities?” noon, halls clangorous with students hurrying to catch their buses. Omar and I alone in my office. He takes a long swallow and lets out a deep Omar bolting out the door screaming, “Blair hit breath through pursed lips. “To clear up the me! HIT me!” Omar running to the Headmas- incident at school, Blair, if I can.” ter’s office, I stupidly following. Closed doors, an My mind flashes back to Phelps Hall, this angry looking swelling on his left forearm, con- boys-only prep school in a posh section of fusion, accusation, denial, administrative leave. Soon after, my dismissal. 47 Omar drains his glass and politely motions for a “Omar, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry about second. I pour. “Thanks. I’m going to need this.” everything. I led you on. I wanted you. I seduced He drains the glass and leans forward. “Blair, she you, I know that. You were a good kid, a damn put me up to it.” good‑looking, decent kid—“ “She?” “Blair,” he interrupts, his olive skin glowing with sweat, “When I recognized you this afternoon I “Gita. My mother. She knows everything.” didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t thought about My stomach turns. “About us?” My response you for a long time. I still don’t have all the seems so stupid. answers, but I decided I had to tell you what really happened. So you would know the truth “Yes. The fishing trip, the tent, making love the about what I did.” first time, all the times, everything. Mother overheard some of the kids at my birthday party “It hurt for a long while, Omar. I’m glad you teasing me about how much time I was spending told me.” in your office. I told her you were just helping “Blair, so you know I’m not making this up, I me with my Latin. She didn’t believe it. She kept want you to know I am in my senior year at Yale pushing me and pushing me until I…She’s an and,” he pauses, “even my mother doesn’t know unyielding woman, hides behind my father but this. After you, I found out who I really am. I always gets her way. When I told her about us, have a lover. He’s a grad student at Yale and he’s she made me set you up. Said I would no longer incredible. I’m sorry I got you fired. I really am.” be her child if I didn’t.” I stand up and lead him to the door. “You left “The welt on your arm?” me twisting in the wind, but I guess I deserved it. “I pulled up my sleeve and hit it a couple times What I did was wrong, and I’ve been paying for it with the pointer from my home room, just ever since, in many ways.” I wave my arm around before I went into your office that day.” the room. “It’s lonely here, most of the time.” I sit down, head spinning. Anger and guilt took Omar points to the Harley parked in the corner, turns overwhelming me. “I loved you, you know. with my name on the saddlebags. “How did a But I knew it was wrong. I’ve been lighting beautiful lady like you take up motorcycles and candles ever since to ease the pain. I suppose I fishing? should be grateful she didn’t go straight to the “My father wanted a boy,” I reply, as I escort him police. Why didn’t she?” firmly to the door. “Family pride. Didn’t want the stigma, didn’t The whine of the descending elevator grows want anything about it in the papers. She just fainter. I pour another glass of sherry and wanted you out of there, and fast. My mother is lean out the open window, letting the gentle good at working behind the scenes. Don’t think afternoon breeze stroke my pulsing temples as she ever told my father. I never asked her and he I watch him emerge onto the street, nine never said anything to me.” floors below.

48 Saint Pete-R by Enid Simon

“Hi, St. Pete! How’s the welcoming committee doing?” Margalissa teetered on the edge of her small cloud and peered upward. The large entity in front of her spread his wings to their impressively full width, let them drop with a feathered thud and sighed. “A) I am not a committee, B) I don’t welcome everyone, and C) I’ve asked you before, Margalissa, to not call me by that diminutive name. I feel that it diminishes me and my responsibilities.” “Oh my goodness, St. Pete! I never thought of it that way. I’d always wished that I had a short name, like Pat or Jane. Instead I was given a moniker that came from both grandmothers, and I never knew either Margaret or Melissa. At least I gave you the right rank, didn’t I?” “Yes, you did and I suppose that I should thank you for that. You should— well, you shouldn’t—hear what some of the unwelcomed humans call me. By the way, both of your grandmothers are here and I’m sure that they would be happy to have a visit from you.” “That would be a nice thing to do, wouldn’t it? In the meantime, is there anything I can do to help you, St. Pete?” Margalissa tried to anchor her sandals more firmly to her cloud, but she only succeeded in making it rain in Toledo. “Thank you for the offer, Margalissa, but I doubt that you could handle any of the jobs I have to do,” Saint Peter sighed. “I really need one of the apostles, but they have their own duties, so I guess that I should just get on with it.” “Well, since I can’t be of any help, may I have your permission to visit Earth for a short time?” This time Margalissa tried to dig her toe into the cloud, but the shift of her stance simply changed the rain to sleet and so she quit squirming. Saint Peter responded in an absent-minded way. “Yes, I suppose it won’t do any harm. You do remember all of the rules about not interfering, don’t you?” Margalissa nodded. The tired saint bobbed his head and she instantly found herself fluttering above a familiar house. Before she left the Earth for eternity, Margalissa had signed an organ dona- tion form, and the recipient of her liver was the woman who lived in that house. The woman, whose name was Vivian, was now in her fifties and had 49 recently welcomed another granddaughter into “Perhaps,” Mark spoke directly to Peter this time, her family. At least it was recent so far as “she could give blessings to the child instead of Margalissa was concerned. Angela was now almost having pride in her?” four years old and was already, in Margalissa’s “Hummmm.” St. Peter rubbed his jaw for a mo- opinion, displaying a high degree of intelligence. ment and then looked at Margalissa. “Do you Vivian daily thanked all the saints and apostles think you could handle that?” for Margalissa’s generosity, and she was teaching Angela to do the same, even though the child as “I will certainly try. Will there be any limits to yet had no idea what a liver was. the blessings?” Margalissa very much enjoyed visiting Vivian “They should include other humans and not and her friends and family. Every time their benefit just Angela,” said Mark. thanks and prayers went wafting by her she felt “And,” added St. Peter, “those blessings must a warm, sort of golden glow, and she had noticed appear to be natural happenings. No winning of that when little Angela’s prayer went by, she also the lottery. Understood?” felt a surge of love and pride the likes of which she’d never felt before. “Oh yes! Thank you, thank you! I’ll ask both of you to OK any blessings I have in mind, and I’ll BUT—pride is a sin, isn’t it? One of the Seven appreciate any and all suggestions either of you Deadlies? might have.” “Oh boy!” thought Margalissa. “I’d better talk to Margalissa floated away, bouncing from cloud to St. Pete right away.” cloud, higher and higher until St. Peter observed The next instant she found herself face-to-face with to St. Mark that she really was learning how to that saint and he didn’t look at all happy with her. use her wings, which many humans never got the knack of doing. “Yes, pride is one of the ‘biggies’” he said. “I agree with you that Angela is a somewhat remarkable For many of the earthly years that followed little human, but she doesn’t belong to you and Angela led a full and active life. She made friends you can’t go strutting around heaven, OR Earth, easily and often chose to befriend people that praising her. So just settle down on your cloud and others shunned. Throughout her life she gave concentrate on singing praises for a heavenly being.” freely of her time, energy, money, love and ideas. Not only her family and friends benefitted, so “Um, Pete –r,” came a new voice from a cloud did strangers and the community at large. When that had just arrived on the scene. “If I might she was interviewed for a local newspaper, the make a suggestion?” interviewer asked how she happened to have Margalissa turned toward the newcomer and im- so many ideas and somehow managed to carry mediately knew he was the Apostle Mark. “Oh them to fruition. Her reply was: “They simply yes, please do,” she exclaimed. “I’m sure any- popped into my head and everyone I knew thing you suggest would be welcome.” helped me turn them into something good.” St. Peter harrumphed slightly, but gave a Somewhere up above, on her cloud, Margalissa go-ahead nod to Mark. beamed with joy.

50 Prelude to Daybreak, by Gail McCoy

51 42° North by Paula Novotnak

I dream the mystery of a slow eclipse, the lunar embrace in a southern sky, the release, the last lift of feet dripping marsh water, before drifts whiten the shoreline, long wings carrying you, shy creature, across the smoky disk of the moon.

52 Mrs. Switalski’s Fat Tuesday Prune Paczki Crisis by Richard Radtke

hile Stella the hairdresser clips at strands of salt-and-pepper hair, Mrs. WKnutowski scans the pages of Movie Star News. “Rock Hudson and Doris Day are said to be having an affair,” she says. Mrs. Switalski blanches. “Not Doris Day. She is a good girl. I can’t believe she would do such a thing.” “Ha!” says Mrs. Knutowski. “Have you taken a good look at Rock Hudson? He’s enough to turn any girl’s head.” The conversation at Pearl’s Isle of Beauty Salon on Milwaukee’s south side moves like a freight ship plunging through the waves of Lake Michigan. Mrs. Knutowski and Mrs. Switalski agree to disagree on the state of Doris Day’s morals, and the discussion moves on to health: there is talk of another polio epidemic this summer of 1953. Mrs. Roggenbach from Hayes Avenue has developed a goiter. The Semrow twins are afflicted with inner ear distur- bances. “The Schultz woman from down by St. Jacobi’s had a bowel obstruction and had to be taken to the emergency,” Mrs. Holzer announces as she waits for her perm to set. “It’s a tragedy.” “Your bowel obstructions will affect your Lutherans,” Mrs. Osewski says knowingly. “Something in their diet, I believe.” “I didn’t know that,” Mrs. Holzer says, furrowing her brow as she reflects upon the information. The group has already covered prospects for the spring planting season and whether it is too early to begin potting annual seedlings—pansies, petunias, impatiens. They have also discussed last night’s John Cameron Swayze news broadcast, which featured a report on the awful killing in Ohio where Doctor Sam Sheppard has been accused of killing his wife. And they found the I Love Lucy show particularly funny this week. The ladies are gathered for the regular ad hoc Thursday wash and set at Pearl’s, situated on the corner of 8th Street and Lincoln Avenue. Preparations are in progress for the Lenten season and the Fat Tuesday feast day preceding it. Tomorrow the ladies will begin their shopping. They will

53 go to Malanchek’s Market or the new Krambo’s Around the room eyebrows are raised in supermarket downstairs in Hills Department incredulity at this wanton boastfulness, but Store to purchase egg noodles, rye and wheat Mrs. Knutowski does not notice the reaction. flour, herring, cabbage, staples needed for Her thoughts are centered on menu planning. Tuesday’s dinner. The meat they will purchase “Then for dessert, of course, the prune paczkis. later at Malanchek’s or at butcher Stankowski’s. It is a tradition in our house.” “What a simply awful word to use for a feast day,” As it is in the houses of each of the women Mrs. Switalski says. “Fat Tuesday indeed. Which gathered at the beauty parlor. Without paczkis of the popes decided to call it Fat Tuesday?” it would not be Fat Tuesday on the south side. Paczkis are a staple of the Lenten Eve meal. “It wasn’t the popes,” Mrs. Jaeckle says. “It was the French. When they took over New Orleans. “And where do you get your paczkis Mrs. It’s Creole.” Knutowski?” Mrs. Holzer asks. “Down by National Bakers?” There is a pregnant pause “I disagree,” says Mrs. Knutowski, who always while Mrs. Knutowski contemplates her reply. thinks she knows better than anybody. “It is called Fat Tuesday because that is the day we “Oh no,” Mrs. Knutowski answers haughtily. “I need to use up the fat in the house before Lent. make my own. From scratch.” Most places it’s held on Tłusty czwartek, but here “Is that a fact?” Mrs. Jaeckle queries. “Even the in the Midwest it’s Fat Tuesday.” She crooks her prune?” neck backward like a plump goose, pleased to have set matters straight. “Of course even the prune. The prune is what makes it.” Now Mrs. Knutowski launches into a “And what will you be having for dinner on description of the ingredients in her very famous Tuesday, Mrs. Knutowski?” The inquirer is Mrs. doughnuts: sweet cream, yeast, egg yolk, butter, Baltes, who comes in only to have her nails done. flour and sugar. Then the prunes, pureed into Mrs. Baltes is the subject of much speculation by a fine consistency to tempt the taste buds of the others in the group, because she works nearly even the harshest critic. She leaves out the secret full time at the legal offices of Attorney John Za- ingredient in her filling—rum—which lends a strow down by 13th Street. Mrs. Baltes fashions special edge to the taste. herself as what they call a liberated woman. The ladies at Pearl’s Isle of Beauty think otherwise. As she ducks her head under the dryer at the far side of the room, Mrs. Switalski blocks out the Mrs. Knutowski squares her shoulders. “I will banter with a troubled heart. At one time she be preparing roasted duck, using my mother’s too made her own paczkis, but no more. Her ar- famous recipe. Also boiled red potatoes, green thritis has made it impossible to work the dough. beans and czarnina. My Emil says mine is the Now she stands in line with the other wives at best czarnina he has ever tasted. He says he National Bakers to purchase a box of one dozen thinks he died and went to heaven.” doughnuts on the morning of Fat Tuesday. Her spirit and her skills in the kitchen have not faded,

54 but her body has begun to fail her. Once she says, “two to four inches, I hear.” Mrs. Switalski was the best baker on the south side. Now she has enough to worry about with her health struggles to get pierogi filled with sauerkraut and problems and the behavior of her husband. mushrooms onto the table. But the deflection does not hold. “And you, Mrs. Mrs. Switalski also has an issue with her husband Switalski,” Mrs. Jaeckle asks, “do you make your to contend with. She learned that last week, in own paczkis for the holiday?” her absence from the beauty parlor, Mrs. The blood rises through Mrs. Switalski’s neck Knutowski made rude comments about Mr. and up into her face. Her reputation as the most Switalski flirting with the waitress at the VFW accomplished baker on the south side is at stake, during the Friday fish fry. Said she saw him and Mrs. Jaeckle’s question strikes her like a pinch the waitress as she passed with a tray full gloved hand challenging her to a duel. of cod and French fries. True or not, it was a ter- rible thing to say in front of all the ladies. From “Yes,” she lies, unaware of the conversation that under the dome of her dryer, Mrs. Switalski gives led to this query. “I have always made my own the sanctimonious Mrs. Knutowski the evil eye. paczkis. What would Fat Tuesday be without home-made paczkis?” With that, she pulls the “I don’t believe in all that baking,” says the liber- dryer hood back over her head and retreats into ated Mrs. Baltes. “I don’t have the time. And the self-imposed exile. paczkis from National Bakers are as good as you can make up at home. Maybe better.” In the confessional at St. Josaphat’s Mrs. Switalski makes the sign of the cross. On the other side A hush falls over the shop, as if Mrs. Baltes has of the screen sits Father Novak, the acolyte just broken wind. All heads turn toward the priest. Mrs. Switalski wishes it was Monsignor speaker. Even Mrs. Switalski flips the hood of Kozminski who was taking her confession, for he her drier up to find out what she has missed. has much more experience in matters of sin and Mrs. Baltes has spoken the unutterable, suggest- has known about her own transgressions since ing that store-bought baked goods are the equal childhood. Father Novak, on the other hand, is of home-made. so very handsome that it is difficult to talk about Mrs. Osewski quickly changes the subject before sin in his presence. And, Mrs. Switalski has a full-fledged conflagration breaks out in Pearl’s noted, Father Novak blushes easily during Bible Isle of Beauty. “Bill Carlson on the TV thinks study sessions when certain subjects of personal we’re going to have snow for the weekend,” she intimacy come up. Monsignor Kozminski, on says. Mrs. Osewski is the peacemaker in the the other hand, often retreats into mild dozing group, always going out of her way to avoid while hearing confession, awaking only when the confrontation, and also to say a rose novena for parishioner raps on the wall of the confessional anyone with trouble in their lives. with a knuckle. And with Monsignor Kozminski, the concept of anonymity between sinner and Mrs. Switalski, unaware of Mrs. Baltes’ gaffe, confessor has long passed into history, for with joins in the discussion of the weather. “Yes,” she his ladies of faith voices, even scents, are imme- diately recognizable by both parties.

55 “In the name of the Father and of the Son and thinks she detects the sweet odor of alcohol of the Holy Spirit,” Mrs. Switalski says. “Amen. wafting through the partition. “Here we are Bless me father, for I have sinned.” concerned with the state of your soul,” Father Novak admonishes. “What else?” “How long has it been since your last confession,” the young priest asks from the other side of the Mrs. Switalski hesitates. Then she says, “I lied booth. to the ladies at the beauty parlor. I told them I make my own paczkis for Fat Tuesday.” And so Mrs. Switalski’s confession begins. “I felt anger in my heart for Mrs. Knutowski, who ac- “And why did you lie to your friends?” cused my husband of pinching the waitress at the “They are not my friends, except for Mrs. VFW. I wished that she would suffer the agony of Osewski. I lied because I was ashamed that I can a gall bladder attack.” Mrs. Switalski pauses. no longer make my own paczkis. It’s my arthritis. “Please go on, my child,” Father Novak says. Mrs. I will need to get store-bought this year.” Switalski cannot help but consider how odd it “A lie, certainly, but not a mortal sin. You can is that such a young man should be calling a make things right, by admitting your sin to mature lady like herself my child. She pushes the those you have deceived.” distraction from her mind and continues. “Must I? Couldn’t I say Our Fathers and Hail “I was so angry that I forgot Mrs. Knutowski has Marys instead?” already had her gall bladder out. I don’t know how I could have forgotten, because she brings “You must do both.” With that, the young priest it up every week at the beauty parlor, her gall assigns her a penance. bladder surgery.” Mrs. Switalski responds: “Lord Jesus, Son of “Enough of Mrs. Knutowski’s gall bladder. God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” What else?” “God, the Father of mercies,” Father Novak “I opened an account for myself at the Building drones, reciting the absolution as though it is a and Loan without my husband’s knowing about disagreeable chore. “I absolve you from your sins it. If he is going about pinching waitresses at the in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of VFW I want to become a liberated woman.” the Holy Spirit.” “You must tell him about it immediately,” Father “Amen,” Mrs. Switalski responds, and rises to Novak says. “A wife has a duty of obedience.” leave the confessional. Despite the blessing, she does not feel relieved. She has sinned, of that “And what about a husband’s duty of faithfulness, she is sure. But she cannot help feeling justified to stop flirting with the waitresses at the VFW?” in her wrath toward her husband, and especially “That is not our concern here,” the reply comes toward Mrs. Knutowski. On her way out of the from the other side of the screen. Mrs. Switalski basilica she nearly bumps into that very person, who is just entering to make her own confession.

56 Mrs. Switalski gives a curt nod, and speculates Then something strange happens. Near the door whether Mrs. Knutowski will own up to rumor to the bakery stands a woman wearing a car coat mongering during her session with Father Novak. much like her own, and covering her eyes with sunglasses. Only a blind person would wear On the walk home, the doubts continue. Mrs. sunglasses on such a dreary winter day, Mrs. Switalski doesn’t know who to be more upset Switalski notes. As she ruminates over this with: her husband, if he did the pinching, or anomaly, a mighty gust of wind swirls around Mrs. Knutowski for spreading the rumor. All this the doorway to the bakery, and takes the hair on top of her arthritis. And, she wonders, why right off the head of the woman with the does the act of confession require the interven- sunglasses. There is a screech, and the woman tion of a priest to relay her sins to the Almighty? bolts from the doorway to retrieve a wig that has Would it not be possible for her to confess her blown out into 16th Street. “My hair!” she wrongdoing directly to heaven, and avoid the bellows. “My beautiful hair!” middle man? The moment the thought enters her mind she realizes that it constitutes yet Like a bolt of lightning out of the blue, Mrs. another sin. Switalski recognizes the voice. It is the same voice that instructed the ladies at Pearl’s in the On Tuesday morning Mrs. Switalski fastens her history and significance of paczki-baking, the babushka under her chin and steps out into same voice that complains about the pain in- the windy late February weather to go down volved in gall bladder surgery. by National Bakers to purchase paczkis. The line stretches out onto 16th Street as a twenty- Mrs. Knutowski recovers her hairpiece and mile-an-hour wind bears down on the shivering brushes it off, then resumes her place in line, customers. The neighborhood wives stand like muttering about the lack of indoor waiting space statues, awaiting their turn to buy dessert for at National Bakers. As Mrs. Switalski nears the evening meal. Mrs. Switalski turns the collar the door of the bakery, the disguised buyer of of her car coat up and pulls her head into the store-bought paczkis reappears, her wig arranged protective rabbit fur like a turtle. lopsided atop her head, her sunglasses cocked at a rakish angle, and two boxes of paczkis in As she approaches the door she sees Mrs. Baltes her arms. Mrs. Switalski backs into the line and standing several places ahead, but she does not pulls her collar higher. She says nothing. The call out to her fellow patron of Pearl’s Isle of Fat Tuesday holiday has been redeemed, and she Beauty. She hopes the legal secretary will not looks forward to a pleasant meal with her mister. notice her, in view of her earlier comments about Some women may be inclined to play fast and making her paczkis from scratch. Mrs. Switalski loose with the truth, she concludes. Others, like pulls her head further into the protective cover Mrs. Baltes and herself, are liberated women. of her fur collar.

57 Imaginary Landscape, by Mary Morgan

58 Serious Fun: Some Danish Jazz Impressions by Norman Leer

he summer of 2010 was warmer than usual in Denmark. This might Thave been because of global warming since much of the U.S. and Europe saw similar temperatures, or it could have been the atmosphere registering all the hot sounds coming from the small coastal town of Juelsminde, where the series of Sunday afternoon concerts at På Havnen has now become the “Juelsminde Jazzfestival.” Each week for eight consecutive Sunday afternoons, På Havnen, the harbor café run by Johnny Valentin features three hours of live traditional jazz, with an occasional small swing combo. The bands are mostly from central or southern Jutland; Juelsminde is on the east coast, south of Ǻrhus, Denmark’s second largest city, which is one hour away. All are worth hearing. In recent years, the bands have crystallized, each develop- ing and refining its own style and voice. In 2005, Johnny Valentin told me the musicians were interchangeable, and moved almost randomly between the different bands. Now, while two have some players in common, each group has evolved a distinct identity; the musicians know each other and work creatively together, and several bands have issued their own CDs. I was lucky to hear five concerts that summer. My wife and I were again visit- ing her Danish family, and were as always enjoying the busy idyllic harbor, the clean natural beaches, small shops and cafes of this indigenous fishing village which has reinvented itself as a green tourist destination. Johnny Valentin’s efforts have been a significant part of this transformation.På Havnen (which means “by the harbor”) occupies a former restaurant space, but has added to good traditional Danish food a mix of jazz and other com- munity events and a welcoming informal atmosphere. Johnny is himself a clarinet player, who began to hear and like traditional jazz while he was living in the nearby city of Horsens. His providing a venue for the music has pulled together a jazz culture that was already quite active in the surrounding area. It’s not uncommon to find a New Orleans style band playing “Canal St. Blues” on the pedestrian streets of neighboring towns, and one of these, Silkeborg, has a Riverboat Festival in late June which also attracts many local bands and their fans. Denmark has had an active jazz scene since the early 1940’s, when a Fats Waller influenced pianist named Leo Mathiesen led a popular big band. Mathiesen was a combination of Harlem stride pianist and showman. He shared the nickname, “The Lion,” with another stride player, Willie “The Lion” Smith. During the 1950’s, a sailor by the name of Arne “Bue”

59 Jensen visited New Orleans. When he returned players often join various table groups for a sand- to Denmark, he played for a while with the wich and a beer. Dogs and children sit with their Bohana Jazz Band, and then formed his own families and sometimes wander across the stage. group, Papa Bue’s Viking Jazz Band. By this Next to the band is a small bar area, where John- time, New Orleans or “trad” jazz had become ny dispenses generous glasses of Tuborg ól or an popular in England through the bands of Chris occasional vin. There’s no cover charge; you can Barber and Ken Colyer. With Papa Bue on sit for the entire afternoon over a glass or two, trombone, Finn Otto Hansen on trumpet and or you can enjoy the buffet lunch. Many of the Jørgen Svare on clarinet, the Vikings carried on people in the audience are regulars, coming each the tradition, playing in a moving lyrical style week to hear the music. They either know each that was drenched in the blues and spirituals other or become new friends, linked by their of the original. But they also added something interest in the music. They are mostly Danes, new, New Orleans style arrangements of Danish with a few Germans and an occasional Ameri- and German songs such as “Nyboders Pris” and can, either an expatriate or a visitor like me. The “Schlaf, Mein Prinzen.” Both became hits, but atmosphere is warm and easygoing—plenty of also showed high musical creativity. fun; but at the same time there’s a seriousness about the music. This interest and knowledge Denmark also developed a modern jazz culture, are in fact so strong that the locals have formed a at first with violinist Sven Asmussen and later Basin Street Jazz Club, currently chaired by Tom with bassist Niels Henning Ǿrsted Pedersen and Laursen, which has over one hundred and eighty the avant-garde Palle Mikkelborg. The country paid members and sponsors other concerts and also attracted many American jazzmen, who programs during the year (disclosure of interest: were drawn by knowledgeable and appreciative I’ve been given a lifetime honorary membership). audiences and an atmosphere free of racism. Tenor sax player Ben Webster was a regular at It’s this combination of seriousness and fun that the Montmartre jazzhus in Copenhagen, where struck me that summer. I can’t think of any he often played with Ǿrsted Pedersen, as did small town in America where the interest in pianist Kenny Drew. Webster is buried in and knowledge of traditional jazz are so active Denmark, as is violinist Stuff Smith. I’ve and involve so many people. New Orleans, of visited his grave at Klakring Church, which is course, has Preservation Hall, the Palm Court just outside of Juelsminde. Café and the Hogan Archives at Tulane. But you’d expect nothing less of The Big Easy, Louis Now, the concerts at På Havnen have given jazz Armstrong’s birthplace and the first focal point of a steady visibility over most of the summer. The jazz. Denmark and Juelsminde in particular are Danes, stoic about their long and rainy winters, fast becoming another worldwide focal point for worship their summers and love their jazz. The classic jazz activity. Copenhagen and Ǻrhus both atmosphere on the restaurant’s terrace is very have excellent jazz festivals which used to feature special. The bands occupy a stage that is also all styles. I remember hearing both Papa Bue and the steps to an indoor dining room, where a jazz John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet on the buffet is laid out for customers. The audience streets of Copenhagen. But lately these festivals outside is seated close to the musicians, and this have focused more on avant-garde and fusion intimacy is reinforced during breaks, when the jazz, and you have to go three hours west by 60 train to Juelsminde to find the older styles done eryone knows where the music comes from and with a unique Danish twist. I hope more people can paint with a wide palette of emotional colors. will come and listen. All the bands are very good, but along with In his commentary for the autobiographical Hot Dixieland Jubilees two others stand out for me Man, Art Hodes’ co-writer and editor Chadwick personally: the Lake City Jazz Band and the Hansen, writes that Hodes made his first trip Tuxedo New Orleans Jazz Band. Their names tell to Europe in 1970. A major stop was Denmark, the story. While Dixieland Jubilees strives for a where Hodes recorded four band sides and one blend of Chicago style and swing reminiscent of trio arrangement with Papa Bue’s Viking Jazz the New York bands of the ’forties, the Lake City Band (two of these have recently been reissued in band is clearly inspired by King Oliver’s Creole a Papa Bue 80th birthday commemorative set by Jazz Band, the Armstrong Hot Fives and Sevens Storyville Records), as well as a solo album with and other Chicago bands of the ’twenties, and Papa Bue’s bass player, Jens Sóland. Hodes him- the Tuxedo Band looks back to Papa Celestin’s self writes about the large crowds he later drew at and other classic Crescent City groups. The last concerts in Germany: two bands share two musicians. Poul Chris- tensen plays trombone with the Lake City Band That evening we had an equally large crowd. I and tuba (called a sousaphone in Denmark) keep asking myself why. Is it because Europeans with the Tuxedo. Christensen was, I believe, also have a love for American jazz and we haven’t? It involved with an earlier Danish group, the Jut- would seem so. They buy the recordings, and landia Jazz Band. Stig Fisker does banjo, guitar when an American jazzman comes to their land, and vocal duties with both the Lake City and they flock to hear him. Many are well informed the Tuxedo groups, and is an organizing force of our jazz heritage. The best jazz discographies on the local jazz scene in general. He told me he come from abroad. It’s like we have the music would also like to play trumpet with a modern and don’t value it, and they value it and pursue it. jazz group. (Hodes and Hansen. Hot Man. Champaign: The Lake City Band has a strong ensemble University of Illinois Press, 1992. P. 103) sound and builds on both short ‘twenties-style I thought of Art Hodes on our last Sunday, as I breaks and longer solos. The repertoire on their heard one of the bands, Dixieland Jubilees, jour- CD features numbers such as “Black and Blue,” ney deep inside “See See Rider,” the blues-laden “Mama’s Gone Goodbye” and the later Sidney sounds driven by the piano of Jens Petersen. I Bechet showpiece “Petite Fleur.” The Tuxedo’s was a little sad about leaving in a few days, and repertoire can overlap on some numbers, but the suddenly everything the blues can stir up swelled band is also strong on spirituals, with clarinet- inside my throat, and the music seemed for a ist Leif Bjórnó gliding soulfully through “In the moment to be just for me. I felt grateful. This Sweet Bye and Bye” or “Over in the Gloryland,” band has a driving bite; the interplay between and touching deep layers of communal sadness Ole Kirk on trumpet, Freddie Bang on trom- and hope. bone, Bent Østergaard on clarinet and sax and the rhythm section lit by drummer Kim Kjær is full of sparks and surprises. But it’s clear that ev-

61 If space allowed, I’d mention all the musicians I’ve begun to sense this mix of seriousness and I heard, sitting on the På Havnen terrace. They fun as essential to an elusive Danish national know their sources and are serious about their character. Cultural generalizations are too easy, art. When I asked Stig Fisker about his, I’d ex- but the Danes have certainly demonstrated their pected him to mention Bjarne “Liller” Petersen, deeper values by developing one of the most the popular and slightly raucous banjo player effective social democracies in the world, and and singer with Papa Bue’s Viking Jazz Band. also by their strong resistance during World War But instead the first name he brought up was II, when they saved most of their Jews and other Johnny St. Cyr. Drummer Kim Kjær lists Ray targeted groups from extermination by the Nazis. Baduc as an influence, and trumpeter Ole Kirk At the same time, the Danes view conflict with writes in Dixieland Jubilees’ flyer that he’s played a lovely irony. There’s a story that if there was a with Alton Purnell. The entire band has col- war and it started raining, the Danes would stop laborated with New Orleans trumpeter Wendell the battle and go in for a cup of strong coffee or Brunious. a beer. I hope I’d join them. Another indication of this seriousness is that Behind all the serious fun at På Havnen is the none of the bands are simply imitating other owner, Johnny Valentin. You’ll find him usually musicians or their recordings. Certainly, the clar- behind the tiny outdoor bar, serving drinks and inetists will do the standard Alphonse Picou solo talking with customers. Sometimes he wan- on “High Society” and the bands incorporate ders between the tables, bringing orders, and other solos that are almost part of jazz folklore. here again he usually stops to chat or wave to But I often sensed new solos and dialogues being someone. He often sports a wide brimmed sun created on the spot. Improvisation is central to hat, and a summer outfit that’s almost Danish jazz, and there was the tangible excitement of tradition: knickers-length shorts and a light shirt. the best live sessions, with the musicians hearing If the weather gets cool or rainy, as it often does, each other and the audience listening to all of you simply add a sweater or a vest. After all, it’s them. At the same time, both musicians and au- still summer, at least for two short months. And dience were sipping their beers and watching the there’s great jazz to listen to, so why get too changing light and swirling seagulls on a Danish concerned about a little wind or rain. summer afternoon.

62 Sundays in Garfield Park by Judith Zukerman

On Garfield Park lagoon Dad and I glide and glide, arms linked and crossed. His black skates know what to do, mine wobble. His firm hold keeps us whirling on the ice, under the arch, where in summer we row, my sister and I taking turns paddling our rented boat under the bridge, dipping oars in the water. We glide from one lagoon to another, pulling hard to stay away from shore. We twirl at the water’s edge not stuck in mud chanting, “Yo, oh, heave, ho.”

63 Sunset Sunrise by William G. Ladewig

e was watching her like a panther waiting to pounce when she was Halone. There—the heavy set one was walking away, probably to get an early start on lunch. He was ready, and he decided to make his move. “Christ, you’re old,” he said to the white-haired woman sitting in the lounge chair strategically placed in the shade to shelter the occupant from the glare of the Florida sun. “So, you think that you’re some spring chicken? The nurses tell me that you voted for FDR and you’re proud of it. It’s your kind of people that screwed this country up to begin with. Irv, my husband, used to say that the damn Democrats started this whole country down a path to hell in a hand basket,” replied the lady and an easy grin lit up her face. She was dressed in a long white sun dress, v-cut in the front flowing to her knees, encapsulating skin that had spent a life time in sun worship and was now shriveling up. On her head she wore a broad-rimmed sun bonnet, set off with a red ribbon that coordinated her outfit down to her slippers. Even at her age, she knew the importance of style. She looked at him through her tinted sunglasses and said, “Why don’t you get out of the sun? Pull up a chair and sit down? You must be tired from watching me all morning.” He walked over and pulled a chair up beside her, just within the protection of the shade. “What makes you think I was looking at you? Maybe I was look- ing at someone else!” he said, puzzled by the fact that she knew who he was. “Right! I’m old, but I’m not senile yet, at least not like you. Do you want some water?” she asked as she pointed to the silver carafe on the table. The man was wearing Bermuda shorts and a polo shirt—white with red stripes that stretched over his stomach, showing it was a size too small or that it remembered him when he was younger. White hair topped a narrow face highlighted by a sharp nose supporting bright blue eyes. At seventy‑two, he was past his prime and going towards the downward side, and he knew it. “You are the best looking thing here, you know. Most of these women look like they’ve been forgetting there’s a salad bar.” “Are you married?” she asked. “No. My Carol died about four years ago. She had breast cancer. Put up a good fight and then she just gave in. I always thought she would have fought 64 to the end, but she just quit. I had problems nine months. I told the kids that we couldn’t figuring out why, but I guess I know now. What afford this assisted living hospice place, but they about you? Married? Involved with anyone?” insisted. Said they didn’t want my money but wanted me to be happy. Happy! Waiting to die! “Move your chair a little to the right, will you? Florida: death’s anteroom. Here we are, standing You’re getting in the sun. It’s not good for you. in line, waiting for our turn. Carol and I used And who needs a man now?” to come down here in the winter and snowbird He laughed and moved the chair, following the it. Had a lot of friends then…after Carol, they shade. “Well, are you?” all drifted away. Some died. Some went back up north to be with their kids.” “Irv died last year. Cancer of the lungs. I told him that he should never have started those cancer “Irv was in the building trades. What about you?” sticks, but he didn’t listen. Never did listen to She asked as she turned on her side to look me. The kids got him to quit about six months directly at him. before they told him that he had the cancer, but “I had a little factory. I made gaskets for the auto by then it was too late. He started up again after industry. Made good money. Let me have the they told him that he was going to die. He said best doctors tell me what I didn’t want to hear. it couldn’t hurt him now anyway. Irv had a great Now the kids will be taken care of and I won’t sense of humor. After him, who wanted anybody be a burden to them. I guess that’s okay. Tell me, else? He was the best!” does it upset you that you know?” “I’m seventy‑two. Too damn young or maybe too “Oh, it did at first but you get used to it, like ev- damn old. I always thought my wife and I would erything else. Nobody guarantees how long you be married forever, and if anyone would go, it get. The hard part is getting to know people here would be me. I never should have started smok- and then not seeing them one day.” ing myself, but during the war you did anything to break the monotony, and I got hooked. Now, “Well, I’m new here and don’t have any friends. well, it was my own damn fault. I guess I under- Do you want to go to lunch with me?” he asked stand why Carol felt the way she did. How long as he stood up. do you have?” She looked over at him and smiled and began to “The doctor says that I have about six months, swing her legs off the side of the chair. “Bring but I say I have until it’s over, and I kinda of like me that walker and lend me a hand, and we’ll go staying around. What about you? You look good. in. I’ll introduce you to the gang.” You still have your hair. You look awful healthy He looked down at her, smiled and said, “Thank to be here.” you. You know you are the prettiest thing here. I “Yeah, I told ’em that I didn’t want to go through think that this could be the start of a beautiful all that chemo and stuff. The kids told me that friendship.” I was crazy, but I told ‘em I wanted quality, not She leaned against his shoulder, smiled and said, quantity, and I’ve had a good run. I’m not going “Get on, you sweet talker. Say, you wouldn’t be to get beaten down like my wife did. They say Jewish, would you?” I can go anytime, but if I’m lucky, I might last

65 Deeply Rooted Visions, by Gail McCoy

66 Stone Talk by Lorna Kniaz

The stones whisper as I pass:

“I loved teaching.” “I left small children.” “It always rained.”

“I was alone for 20 years before I could join him.” “Tell me about the marriages, divorces and my new grandchildren.” “Come again; no one comes to visit me anymore.”

“None remembers that I always kept an immaculate house.” “I loved flowers and music.”

“I wish I had spent more time with my family.” “I held high office and made a lot of money.” “Life is a joy.”

And: “Come lie with me and warm my bed again.”

67 Monsters by the Bed by George Faunce

When you were young MONSTERS crawled about beneath your bed! They never got their claws on you, because you stayed awake. (And never slept.)

You made bad choices as you grew, and let some “monsters” into bed with you. They tortured you, making love…then making waste. And you never, never slept.

Now too old, too sick to move, still tethered to your bed, you watch the monsters brood. They peer at you with clipboards now, a furtive, sideways glance. Inserting needles, attaching tubes, …and whispering… That now, at last you’ll sleep.

68 Saying Goodbye by Wil Selbrede

“When a farm is sold for whatever reason, a part of the family is sold as well…” — Jerry Apps Rural Wisdom Woodruff WI: Amherst Press, 1997. p. 17 he old woman climbed wearily up the concrete steps leading from the Tstorm cellar, straining to carry a large cardboard box of Mason jars. As she reached the top she set the box down and turned her back to the brisk March wind to catch her breath. “Henry!” she shouted. A tall, spare man emerged from the tool shed on the other side of the farmyard, also carrying a large box. “Henry!” she shouted again, “Can you help me with this box of jars? It’s more’n a body can handle in this wind.” “In a minute, Martha, soon as I get this dang box of tools on the truck.” Buffeted by the wind, he walked heavily to the old farm truck parked in the gravel drive. The springs shuddered as he heaved the box of tools onto the truck bed and shoved it back against the packed furniture. By habit rather than necessity, he pulled a red bandanna from the back pocket of his overalls, wiped his face and turned toward the waiting Martha. “Ma, what in the tarnation do you want with those old Mason jars? Taint like you’re gonna have to cook for threshing crews anymore! That little house doesn’t have hardly any storage space.” “Well tell me this, then, Pa,” Martha replied, arms akimbo, her round face flushed. “Just what in tarnation are YOU going to do with all those wrenches and things you just brought up from the tool shed? I don’t recall that our school teacher daughter and that insurance salesman husband of hers are going to have any farm machinery sitting around their yard just waiting for you to fix!” Henry looked down at his large, work-worn hands. “I don’t know, Ma, just seems like I’m losing a child, not having tools in my hands. I—I figured I’d see if I could maybe find some machinery repair outfit there in the city that could use some help.” He flexed his strong fingers. “Doesn’t seem right, not having anything to do with my hands.”

69 “Same here, Pa,” Martha replied ruefully. “I been the draft after he finished high school, he was cannin’ since I was knee high to a grasshopper. pretty mad but he stuck right here despite all, It’s a small kitchen in our new place, I know. But and farmed the whole four years, even though he cannin’ don’t take up much room, long as you wanted to fight.” got a pressure cooker hooked up.” She added Henry gently turned her toward the barnyard brightly, “Sarah says there’s a farmer’s market and pointed toward the buildings, then a distant down in an old part of the city. She tol’ me hill. “Time to say goodbye to our farm animals— farmers from all over bring fresh picked fruit and and my kin.” His eyes reddened and he quickly vegetables from early spring ‘til the parsnips are brushed the back of his hand across his nose as ready when the snow flies.” She buried her face he added, “Come, Martha, walk with me to the in her apron as she added through her sniffles, hill, one more time. “Leaving the farm after all these years, it’s just like when we lost young Henry to that flu.” Slowly, bracing against the sharp gusts of wind, they toured each of the buildings surrounding Henry bent down awkwardly and put his arms the barnyard. Henry took a last, longing look around Martha’s stout waist as he kissed her gray into the dark interior of the tool shed, then led hair. “Now, Ma, let’s not go through that again. Martha through the maze of farm equipment in You know we tried hard to keep the place up, but and around the building, stopping to stroke the when Ralph went off to that General Motors seat of the harrow and run his fingers along the automotive engineering college two years ago, cylinder block on the huge tractor. Silently, he I couldn’t do the farming anymore, even with led the way to the adjacent hen house, where what hired help I could get.” the last few hens and a lonely rooster pecked “Well, it seems to me that boy could have stayed dutifully at a barren patch of black earth. Mar- here and worked the farm in our old age, like tha broke free of Henry’s grasp long enough to oldest sons are supposed to do!” fill a metal basin from a nearby sack of cracked corn and threw it on the ground to the fluttering “Now Ma, it’s 1948 and the war is over and most birds. “Can’t stand hungry chickens,” she said, of the young farm boys who weren’t killed fight- “seems like they’re hungry all the time. Hope that ing Hitler and that Japanese Emperor, Hiro— new hired man remembers to take care of them Hiro—something, they’re going to college on the when—when we go.” Tears came again. GI Bill, not coming back to the farms. Ralph’s been a good son. When I got his deferment from

70 “He’s a good man, Martha. He’ll do what’s need- stalks of last year’s crop starting to disintegrate ed, don’t you worry. Besides, the new owners will into mulch for the soil; past the big pasture, a be here in two days. John and Elvira are good hint of green peeking from underneath its short people and good farmers. They’ll do right by the brown grass and the young branches on the animals; don’t you fret about it none.” He led weeping willows along the meandering creek the sniffling Martha into the barn, where a long already showing a tinge of yellow. row of Holstein cows were lying down in their Henry glanced from side to side as they walked, stanchions, patiently chewing their cuds as they unable to speak. He removed his jacket and awaited the next milking. One wearing a bell carefully draped it around Martha’s shoulders as around her neck stood up when she saw Henry. they approached the hill. The tall oak trees were Henry patted her head, carefully avoiding the reluctantly giving up last year’s leaves to the moist nose she tossed in his direction. “Tess, you persistent wind. Henry put his arm around old bell cow, you be good now and remember Martha as they stood looking down at the to bring the herd back from pasture at milking ancient tombstones marking the few graves in time, you hear?” the clearing at the center of the hill. “John and A loud whinny greeted them as they approached I shook hands about the cemetery,” Henry said the horse stalls at the end of the barn. A huge gruffly. “He allowed as how it was sacred and gray Percheron raised its head from its oat promised to take care of Pa and Ma and their bin, still munching the last few kernels. Henry kinfolk here.” He pointed to a small stone at the reached over and affectionately patted its velvety very back. “That’s Great-grandpa Amos. He got nose. “Sam, you be good to your new owner. this farm from the government right after the He’s going to need you for some plowing chores, Civil War, for being a soldier.” so he’ll be keeping you around for a spell—at Martha nodded. She had heard the story many least I hope so,” he added under his breath. times. She pulled the jacket closer around her. He abruptly steered Martha out the back door. “Henry, its best we be going now. It’s a long “I want to go up on the hill to say goodbye to drive to the city. We can come back again, my kin.” come summer.” Martha was shivering from the cold wind as they Henry stared down at the stones for a long time, left the comparative shelter of the barnyard and and breathed a deep sigh. “Yes, Ma, it’s best.” walked up the familiar path toward the small They turned and walked down the path, never cemetery on the wooded hill at the back of the looking back. farm, walked past the corn fields with the disked

71 John by Rita Hack Rausch

He was one of those children who turned his parents’ hair white in their forties. Curious, an explorer, independent, an experimenter, that little boy was an inch away from disaster from the time he could move. He was just crawling when he maneuvered the long flight of steps in their old Milwaukee house—the kind that rises steeply, pauses at a platform, turns, then continues up five more steps. A chair lay sidewise at the bottom? A bench or chest moved to block his adventure? John nudged the impediment aside, crawled through the legs or pulled himself up and over. This day, he quickly climbed the steps to the top, rested on the platform then moved up the last five. He swiveled his little bottom around and smiled his success. AAHH, he bellowed as he started back down to try again, headfirst. The bump and rumble brought Mom running. There lay her baby, chin trembling but not a tear. She watched as he sat, looked up the stairs, took a breath and tackled them again. She climbed softly avoiding the squeaky step, watching John in the reflection of the window. He sat at the top of the steps, looked down at the offending stairs and pondered. It took just a minute before he turned on to his tummy and slid down feet first. Safely at the bottom, he sat, slapped the floor with his hand and laughed out loud. He was about eight when he was disciplined (not for the first time) and decided it was time to leave. He stopped in the kitchen to tell his mother he was running away from home. She said that made her very sad, she would miss him. Would he like to take a lunch with him? “Well, ok,” he muttered. She made his favorite sandwich, peanut butter with mayonnaise on white bread, and packed it in a used paper bag with two cookies and a small apple. Off he went down the long city block. Mom watched him from the bay window keeping well inside the curtain in case he turned back to see the last of his boyhood home. At the end of the street, he stopped. Stood there for minutes. He wasn’t allowed to cross the street. He sat on the curb, opened his lunch and ate. It was a full hour before he folded the paper bag, stood up and turned toward home. Mom hurried to a chair far from the window and picked up a book. As John opened the back door, she went to him, hugged him and told him how pleased she was to see him back. Embarrassed, he glanced down at the family pet dancing around his feet and said gruffly, “still got the same old dog, I see.” 72 In the multi-ethnic neighborhood in which they ships and others in the convoy—headed toward lived—Greek, Italian, Polish, German, Irish and an enemy that was better trained and better motley mixtures—boys were allowed to roam equipped. freely during the summer and found ways to Years later, after I had married his younger brother, entertain themselves. One game they played was John told me, ruefully, that after having two Dare. They ran along the rails on the Wells St. destroyers shot out from under him, he thought viaduct and waited for the train. The one who he would be safer under the water so he joined could stay on the viaduct the longest won. John the submarine service. Their days were spent never lost a dare. This day, he was past the center in this coffin-like vessel filled with the smell of when the train was sighted. The boys turned unwashed, sweating male bodies, food spoiling, to run back but John was not going to make it. oil and fuel, only coming up to periscope level “JOOHHNNN! RUUUNNNN!” shrieked his when their radar located an enemy ship, torpe- brothers and buddies. Desperate, John leaped does ready. Fire One! Fire Two! Sometimes over the railing and clung to the metal super surfacing for that treasured breath of fresh air structure high over the valley below. The train and to recharge batteries. Diving to 800 feet went by, swaying the long bridge. His cohorts at the sight of the enemy, as deep as the vessel raced back to help unclench his hands and lift could go without rupturing seams, listening him over the rail. John still had not lost a dare. for the sonar above: ping ping Ping Ping PING He turned seventeen just weeks before the attack PING PING! No one made a sound. No one on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. His future moved, No one breathed. Depth charges ex- was in the navy and he tried to convince his ploding so near, sailors became missiles thrown parents to sign permission for him to join. “Not against walls and floor of the vessel. PING Ping until you’ve finished high school,” they told ping ping… His mother said he was an emo- him. The day after graduation, he enlisted, tional wreck when he returned from the Pacific. went through boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Today it would be called PTSD. It was called Training Station and then on to San Diego, battle fatigue then. assigned to a destroyer and shipped out to John retired from the navy as a Lt. Commander, the Pacific theater. A 17-year-old seaman on a managed a hotel and lived a long life. His wife destroyer—that small, fast ship designed to seek said, although the events were less and less out the enemy and to defend carriers, supply frequent, she would still in later years be startled awake as John screamed in his sleep, “DIVE DIVE DIVE!”

73 Black Swallowtail, by Susan Hoffman

74 Collecting Trips by April Hoffman

ad’s job as a herpetologist required that he amass large collections of Ddead reptiles and amphibians. This meant that every pleasant weekend my parents and I went on collecting trips. Which direction we drove depended on where Dad thought he could find the specimens he needed. Before each trip we loaded the car with snake sticks, which resembled hoes but had a flat hook on the end, and long canvas snake bags. We also took jars of alcohol or formaldehyde. We used these to kill and then preserve the specimens. During the ride, Dad drove and Mom did needlework. I either stood be- tween them to stare at the road ahead, or tucked myself on top of the back seat under the rear window to watch the trip in reverse. Seat belts hadn’t been invented in the ‘40’s. No one worried much about safety. We would drive until Dad saw a place where he thought we might find the desired animals. If his search was for snakes, this would be a woods or pasture. When Dad spied an area that had large flat stones he would stop the car and all three of us would grab a snake bag and a snake stick. Then we scattered in three different directions. This allowed us to cover more territory. We never considered that we were trespassing, but freely climbed over and under farmers’ fences. The pastures and woods we rambled teemed with wildlife. I would spend the day watching butterflies and dragonflies, chasing fence lizards and looking for box turtles, which I knew how to sex. A male box turtle had red eyes, a female had brown. If there was a creek, there would be schools of minnows to watch and crayfish, which we called “crawdads.” In the woods I might find walking sticks or fabulous moths camouflaged on the bark of trees. Sometimes we discovered the remains of abandoned farmhouses. These were easy to spot because of the orange tiger lilies blooming nearby. Years ago, some farm woman, hungry for beauty, had planted them. Nearby we might find rusted parts of old farm machinery, loose bricks, maybe even an antique china doll’s head, pitted with years of grime.

75 Once in a woods I stumbled upon an abandoned would lean over and pinch my fingers tight be- house site. All that remained was a square pit hind its jaws. Doing this insured that the snake filled with weeds. When I jumped down to couldn’t whip around and bite me when I picked investigate, I discovered an emaciated raccoon. it up. If it was a rattlesnake, I would run and try Although weak, he struggled valiantly to claw at to find Dad before it slithered away. At the end me. I climbed out of the pit and raced to find of the day, we put the animals Dad wanted to my parents. They quickly followed me back. keep in the jars of alcohol, where I’d watch them Dad explained that the raccoon had fallen into thrash around until they died. the remains of this cellar and couldn’t climb up My favorites were hog-nosed snakes. They scare the steep concrete walls to escape. Because the away predators by looking like rattlesnakes. And pit didn’t have enough food or water, the ’coon If their appearance doesn’t work, they hiss, mak- was starving and dehydrated. ing a sound like rattles shaking. If that doesn’t We scoured the woods for berries and bugs. We work, they poop and roll around until it covers brought him frogs and minnows. We tore the their bodies. If all of those tricks fail, they flip legs off of grasshoppers so he could easily catch onto their backs, open their mouths and play and eat them. Ravenous, he devoured everything dead. One thing they will never do is bite. I we offered. When Dad filled his straw hat with loved finding them even though they sometimes water and placed it near him, the raccoon drank pooped all over me. They were the best snakes it faster than the water could seep out. because Dad had no use for them. After playing with them I could set them free. The problem then became how to get him out of the pit. Because the scrawny captive didn’t realize On one trip when I was seven or eight, Dad our motives were pure, he tried to bite us each skidded the car to a fast stop, yelling, “Two corn time we approached. Dad finally carried him out snakes on the road ahead!” I assumed he meant by using folded snake bags. Terrified, the rac- for me to get them, so I bolted out of the back coon weakly lumbered off, periodically turning seat and tore after them. I grabbed the first one, around to snarl at us. then hightailed it across the road and got the second. I returned to the car out of breath, a In my search for snakes, I’d run to flat rocks that snake dangling from each hand. With two writh- might be hiding one from the sun’s heat. I’d snag ing snakes to control, it I was a moment before I the edge of the rock with the hook of my snake looked up from the back seat. When I did, I saw stick to pry it up. If it was a small, harmless that Mom and Dad were both turned around snake, I’d grab it and stuff it deep down in my staring at me open mouthed. While chasing snake bag. Then I’d tie a knot at the top of the down the snakes I had been on automatic, bag and meander to the next rock. not realizing what an impressive feat I’d accom- If the snake was big enough that its bite would plished. I spent the entire trip home basking hurt, I’d gently place the flat hook of my snake in glory. stick on top of its head to pin it down. Then I

76 Goodnight, Irene by Kenneth Richardson

Hello Irene, even now, this very hour, it is difficult to accept that you have left us.

Your quick wit silenced.

Your iron resolve, rusting slowly several years, had gradually impaired your heart, your knees, your eyes, your hearing, yet not your spirit… nor your love of family across the generations, reaching back for reunion with your Mother, taken from you so abruptly, as you have left us.

Yet, looking forward, ever forward, uncomplaining, and now waiting in some distant place as the rest of us gather to honor and remember one who moved with grace, and taught us patience, patience, patience and, most of all, love.

Goodnight, Irene, goodnight. 77 Contributors

Dave Berger was an ad agency research director in Chicago. In 1994 he and Barbara came to Madison, where she is an active piano player, he’s had many of his plays produced, and he paddles his kayak on Lake Wingra. They baby- sit their twin three-year-old granddaughters in Lodi every Wednesday. George Faunce spent the first 60 years of his life close to the Jersey shore, riding its waves with joy every summer. Today he prefers to ride the waves at Camp Randall stadium, on cold autumn afternoons with thousands of Badgers by his side. April Hoffman retired as Madison’s Randall Elementary School librarian eleven years ago. She and her husband, John, enjoy viewing art, traveling and socializing. Three of her memoirs were published online by Madison Magazine this spring. She thanks the editors of The Agora for selecting her essays for publication. John Hoffman has taken many photography workshops both in the U.S. and abroad. His photos have appeared in a variety of publications and exhibits. This photo is of his granddaughter, Cheyenne Hoffman. Susan Y. Hoffman, a retired reading specialist, spends time promoting literacy, pretending to be an artist, and gardening—with an eye toward attracting butterflies. Her work in acrylic and oil paints has ranged from abstract art to realistic portraits. Lorna Kniaz Words are music, swirling in my head, arranging themselves in temp, chords and keys. Set in type, they no longer belong to me. It’s too late to change horses and gallop in a different direction. So, words will keep dancing and singing. Bill Ladewig is a former gandy dancer, Boston College football player, infantry captain, publisher, award-winning writer and retired trial attorney. In 2008 he won the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association Jade Ring. He lives in Spring Green with his wife, award-winning writer Paula Dáil, and their trusty companion Tennessee Ernie Beagle. Norman Leer is a professor emeritus of English at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He has published three books of poetry and has completed a new collection All the Colors Happening. Many of his articles and poems have appeared in journals. In 1990, he received the Illinois Significant Poets Award. Norm also enjoys long walks with his artist wife Grethe and listening to his many CDs.

78 Ellen Maurer retired from the University of Wisconsin–Madison as senior university relations specialist in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. She leads PLATO’s morning Reminiscence Writing Group. She and her husband, Ken Pippert, enjoy a little lake cottage in northern Wisconsin where they canoe, hike, bike and geocache. Gail McCoy creates collages and watercolor paintings. Her work provides a means of introspection as well as being grounded in the powerful and univer- sal experience of nature. She is represented at Grace Chosy Gallery, Madison and High Street Gallery in Mineral Point. She is on the board of Wisconsin Regional Artist Association and a member of Wisconsin Visual Artists. Mary Morgan remembers that art was an early and persistent interest her family encouraged. She earned a MFA from the UW-Madison. Mary had a long career as an art teacher at many levels. Her other interests include reading, nature and great conversations. Paula Novotnak is a poet, teacher of creative writing and professional astrologer. In writing “Broom” and “42° North” she used a process she created for her “Writing from Center” classes in which the writer draws five words, unseen and at random, then composes a piece that includes these words. Dick Radtke’s work has appeared in a number of regional publications including the Wisconsin Academy Review, East of the Web, Prime Times and Julien’s Journal. Author of six comic mystery novels and two short story collections, he has earned a number of writing awards, including the Jade Ring Award for fiction. Rita Hack Rausch has been a high school teacher, dietitian, UW Agriculture Extension Agent and business owner. She has a couple of graduate degrees and lists four pages of continuing education classes (including business and law). A mom of five, she’s been married 46 years to the same man. Julie Richardson “captured” the stingray while swimming off the Cayman Islands with husband Ken Richardson. She also enjoys capturing the expres- sions of grandchildren, using photos to create photo essays. In a previous life she was a medical librarian at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut and at Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC.

79 Ken Richardson has written a lot of “stuff” during the past half century— term papers, blue books, news releases, features, annual reports, propaganda, AV scripts, poems, short stories, shopping lists, mortgage checks and Submissions cover sheets for The Agora. Evelyn Rueckert was born in Norfolk, VA. After entering the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service in 1954 as a code clerk and secretary, she served in Istanbul, Bonn and Washington. Following her marriage, she accompanied her husband to postings in Basel, Edinburgh, Stuttgart, Prague, Leningrad and Antwerp. Marnie Schulenburg is a Wisconsin native who applied her journalism degree to newspaper/ TV reporting and magazine editing, followed by a career jump into medical device marketing and consulting. She’s written two books, a mystery and a novel about the politics of cancer research. Wil Selbrede graduated from high school in 1943 and immediately volunteered for the military, serving mostly in the Pacific Theater. He obtained a BS in economics at the UW-Madison. After a career in factory management he retired, bought his first computer and began serious writ- ing—memoirs, essays, poetry, mostly short stories—and the creative beat continues. Enid Simon grew up on a farm in northern Wisconsin and has lived in the state all of her life. Degrees from UW-Madison resulted in her spending 35-plus years on the staff of the Engineering Library on the Madison campus. “I love to read and write, but the writing takes a lot longer.” Joanne Lee Storlie summarizes her life as “one long Search for Meaning and Truth.” She spent 20 years as a stay-at-home mom (“a very tough school”) and 14 years each in banking and as a university physics department secretary. Her writings include a Study Guide for the PLATO course she led. Interests include psychology, parapsychology, philosophy and spirituality. Judith Zukerman, Chicago native and long-time Madison resident has recent work published in Jewish Women’s Literary Annual Volume 9, N.Y.C., May 30, 2013, Midwest Prairie Review, April 2013, and Wisconsin Poets Calendars 2013 and 2014. She is the author of Amsterdam Days, a journey through poetry.

80 Ordering Information

We have a limited number of copies of The Agora, Volume 3, for sale. To purchase a copy send a check made payable to UW-Madison for $5.00 to: PLATO Agora UW-Madison Continuing Studies 21 North Park Street, 7th floor Madison, WI 53715 COVER ART POETRY John Hoffman David Berger George Faunce BACK COVER ART Lorna Kniaz Ellen Maurer Norman Leer Paula Novotnak ART Kenneth Richardson John Hoffman Judith Zukerman Susan Hoffman

Gail McCoy NONFICTION Mary Morgan George Faunce Julie Richardson April Hoffman Kenneth Richardson Norman Leer Ellen Maurer FICTION Richard Radtke William G. Ladewig Rita Hack Rausch Richard Radtke Kenneth Richardson Wil Selbrede Evelyn Rueckert Enid Simon Marnie Schulenburg Joanne Lee Storlie